Godwin's Law, a long time
proverb on the
Internet, which was first began in the early days of
Usenet newsgroups, goes something like this:
"Whoever first mentions Hitler or Nazis in a thread immediately loses the argument." History has repeatedly shown that once a
debate gets to the point where people bring
Hitler's sour puss into the picture, the argument has turned into a venomous
shouting match and no one is listening to anyone anymore.
This is known as Hitlering a thread.
Say for example someone makes a statement which somehow glorifies or compliments one individual over another (i.e. Captain Kirk is better than Captain Picard or vice versa), or one product over another (i.e. Macs are better than PCs or vice versa), or one type of person over another (i.e. purple people are better than orange people or vice versa), this will inevitably cause someone reading the conversation to chime in and argue against the statement. People who do this on purpose are generally referred to as trolls. Say for example many other people enter into this conversation, and people begin taking sides. Purple people begin saying why orange people are so bad. Orange people begin saying why purple people are so bad. And before you know it one side is accusing the other of threatening to take away one's inalienable rights, or threatens bodily harm, or questions why orange or purple people even exist much less breathe the same air.
It is around this time somewhere that someone says well if you feel this way you're just like Hitler. This direction of illogical logic in conversations has happened so many times it has proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that it is fruitless. By this point no one in the conversation is actually listening to anyone. They're just all yelling at each other instead of talking to each other.
So if you ever notice this happen, please just walk away, or just shout out "Hitler" and move on to talk about basketweaving or something entirely other than whatever was being discussed.
Trust me. You'll have less ulcers this way, and will most certainly live longer.