Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. This is a saying widely circulated in English-speaking countries. Children grow up hearing it repeated constantly—at home, at school, among their friends. Words don’t cause harm. Weapons do.

This statement is nothing more than a fallacy—a cover to avoid facing complex dilemmas, such as the root causes of bullying, head-on. And there are certain outlets on the internet that are fully aware of this. They use it to distort reality, manipulate emotions, and gain more influence. These are the online debate channels.

They come in a wide variety of formats. Surrounding a person with their opponents and making them debate everyone. Podcasts and live streams, hosted by individuals seeking to contrast two opposing viewpoints. On the surface, it may seem like a form of entertainment like any other. It may even give the impression of diversity and neutrality, since they give everyone an equal chance to speak. Everyone gets their time in the spotlight. Time they use to shout, insult, and be disrespectful. Time they use, not to debate, but to fight.

A fight doesn’t require physical contact or any real danger. It just needs two or more people eager to win, to assert their dominance—even aggressively. This is the personality type the channels are looking for: people who aren’t afraid to play dirty or say outrageous things just to get attention. They select two people who’ve already come in angry from home, seat them across from each other, the mediator poses a question, and they do all the work themselves. These altercations don’t even need to be edited in any way for the animosity they feel toward one another to come across on screen. Hearing them fire off “fuckers” and “son of a bitch” like bullets from a gun, noticing the gradual escalation as they get more drawn into the topic, and seeing the mediator’s desperate gaze—like a war correspondent in the midst of a bombardment—is all the viewer’s brain needs to generate adrenaline.

That adrenaline rush is all the show producers need to keep a concerning segment of the population hooked. As more “debates” pop up on YouTube and TikTok, polarization grows, fueled by the buzz generated by the videos, which seem to promise unity across party lines but actually achieve the exact opposite. Even if they present different points of view, the anger we feel at seeing someone we view as an enemy insult our entire community in the most immature way possible does not generate empathy or a willingness to see the world from another perspective. It generates an immediate rejection of their ideas.

It doesn’t open minds—it locks them away. I’m not condemning anyone who consumes this kind of content. I fall into that trap myself from time to time. I just ask that those who do so do it thoughtfully, and not use it as fuel to reinforce their ideology. And if that’s what you’re looking for, you can find a wealth of articles and essays on the same platform that are both entertaining and informative. Political orientation is a choice determined by the individual, and so is the responsibility to take a conscious stand. Don’t become like the crazies in those videos. Educate yourselves, be open to perspectives different from your own, and above all, keep your composure. Because when we lose respect for others, we lose our humanity. Because words do cause harm.

( i can only sign this )