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I was in the speech and debate club, but there wasn’t a class. I remember it much more fondly than some of these comments. We worked on several areas, Group Discussion being one of them. Part of it was acknowledging and tracking how often other members spoke and bringing them into the fold and ensuring you didn’t go too far above or below the middle line.
Genuinely taught me a lot about having meaningful conversations and well structured verbal arguments, and why I now know what to do with my wacky inflatable arms no one ever instructed me on the proper use of while speaking.
But if it’s Ben Shapiro type shit? That’s for the birds, I agree with that sentiment I’m seeing in some places.
Wouldn’t Benny shaps completely fail at HS debate competitions because literally his only move is the gish gallop?
You’d be surprised. I was a nationally ranked competitor in the public forum event during highschool. Like, my partner and I put up single digit placements in both NFL and CFL nationals (I know, I know. National forensics league, catholic forensics league. Not football) during my senior year. “Pound the table” (ptt, ill be using it a few times) was a strategy that represented roughly 1/3 of the competition. At that point it was down to judge variance; you could win over some ptt friendly judges by making the other team look and feel stupid, but a lot of them you basically had to figure out how to more belligerently speak over the other team without crossing the judges’ line of “too far”. Baiting them into rage meltdowns worked at lower levels of competition, but the best ptt teams could recognize and avoid that. For some meets we’d literally dumb down our cases for the area we were competing in. “Christian science monitor” was a source that would get you laughed out of the room in some areas, but in other areas you basically couldn’t win unless you somehow verbally fellated the big imaginary friend of whatever shithole southern highschool you were competing in.
TLDR: a large number of highschool debate judges have few enough braincells that the gish gallop absolutely works
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Yeah for a few competitions. It was a lot of fun for the one year I was still in school to do it.
My home room was next to the debate room and I was always so confused how a club about debating basically boiled down to how fast can you get words out of your mouth. I’m sure I’m simplifying it, but I swear that’s all they did. Just talk really really fast.
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This was super enlightening, I appreciate the effort to let me know what I was experiencing all those years ago.
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Absolutely not mate! Watch a Ben Shapiro debate, he gets his splinter violated almost every debate! Sure, you might scare or stifle> quote the words into an unexperienced debater but thats not really an accomplishment!
Its kind of a trade off actually! You not answering a point might seem as you coinciding, or even agreeing to it: so it might seem brilliant to bring up 3-4 like benny boy does while only really giving the opportunity to answer one, but… you also give them the choice to pick the one they can answer best while personally pushing your own possibly better arguments away!
That’s a specific event called “policy”. The other competitive highschool debate events in the US (at least when i competed) are public forum, Lincoln Douglas, and student congress. The super fast speaking was referred to as “spreading”, and it only happened in policy debate. Policy was pretty subjectively stupid imo. The year I started debate, the team that won nationals in policy won because their plan only destroyed the world 10x over, where the opponents plan destroyed it 20x over. Not that the other events were any less stupid. Granted that it was a small local tournament and I was against a team of sophomores, but I’ve successfully won a round of public forum debate by claiming that nuclear energy is good and we should make more primarily because that would increase the spawn rate of mutant ninja turtles thus reducing crime.
now we can just hit play on that hbmomberguy video and we’re all set (unless you cite him as the source do not just summarise it, he will come for you)
No polio AND extra focus! It’s a win-win!
I laughed out loud
