I really need to learn to stop arguing on the internet.

In the larger sense, everyone does. In terms of how often they resolve important world issues, internet arguments rank just below dance-offs, but that’s not my problem.

I, specifically, need to learn to stop arguing on the internet because I always end up arguing the wrong side.

For instance, let’s say I happen upon a forum debate over whether the president is, in fact, a shape-shifting alien squid in disguise. One person, we’ll call him “Idiot,” is defending the space squid theory. Another person, we’ll call him “Not Idiot,” is refuting the first.

I have no reason to argue with Idiot. If someone really thinks the country is run by extraterrestrial cephalopods, there’s no hope. That person’s brain is clearly stored in a titanium safe with a 128-digit combination code and an elaborate self-destruct mechanism, buried deep beneath Delusion Land, and I don’t have the time or backhoe to dig it out.

So I read the argument for entertainment value, and it goes something like this:

Idiot: The president is a shape-changing alien squid.

Not Idiot: Give me proof.

Idiot: Here is a picture of the president at a seafood dinner, not eating the calamari.

Not Idiot: You’re an idiot.

At this point, I’m on Not Idiot’s side. He seems like a stand-up guy.

Idiot: Prove the president isn’t a shape-shifting squid.

Not Idiot: I don’t have to prove it. It’s such a patently ridiculous idea that I’m just going to stand here and laugh.

That seems fair to me. I’m wondering if I shouldn’t get to know Not Idiot. Maybe we could form a bocce ball team or something.

Idiot: Look, it stands to reason that if the Earth has been visited by alien shape-shifting squid, they’re going to want to use their powers to infiltrate governments. You can’t deny that.

Not Idiot: The Earth has not been visited by alien shape-shifting squid.

I’m still on Not Idiot’s side here. He’s talking sense. I pull up Wikipedia to find out what “bocce ball” actually is.

Idiot: Oh come on, if there are shape-shifting squid anywhere in the universe, why would you assume they wouldn’t want to visit us?

Not Idiot: Look, you ontologically damaged asswad, there are no intelligent shape-shifting squid in the White House, there are no intelligent shape-shifting squid on the planet, there are no intelligent shape-shifting squid anywhere in the universe! It’s a ludicrous idea. If there were intelligent aliens, they wouldn’t be squid, and if there were intelligent squid, they wouldn’t be shape-shifting! There are no intelligent shape-shifting squid.

At this point, I frown and delete the e-mail I’m drafting to the Bay Area Bocce Ball League. Because, as Randall Munroe so eloquently put it, someone is wrong on the internet. I get involved in the squid argument.

Me: How do you know there are no intelligent shape-shifting squid in the entire universe? We know literally nothing about life in other solar systems. There’s no reason to assume that extraterrestrial life would necessarily mirror Earth life. Hell, maybe we’re the exception and every intelligent life form EXCEPT us is a shape-shifting squid.

Not Idiot: Oh, great, another one of the squid-heads.

Idiot: Yay! Someone understands me!

You see what I’ve done there, right? I’ve taken a perfectly reasonable point — we don’t know what extraterrestrial life forms would look like — and somehow managed to place that point in the context of an insane ramble about invertebrate heads of state. The effect is something like placing a certified public accountant into a neon-colored Humvee full of 10,000 angry shrews on PCP that is currently falling off a cliff. Into a lake of liquid nitrogen. Which is surrounded by junior-high school students with hammers and a fleeting love of science. The point here is that the outcome will be suboptimal.

And so it is. By defending the idea that there might conceivably be intelligent shape-shifting squid somewhere in the universe, I am lumped with the Idiot, and everything I say is construed as an attempt to justify the existence of a mollusk president. And it’s all bundled up and stored in the Internet Archive.

So there you have it, the reason I don’t get into arguments on the internet. Except when I do.

Illustration: VanoNTP/deviantART

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Born helpless, nude and unable to provide for himself, Lore Sjöberg eventually overcame these handicaps to become a cephalopod, a gastropod and a tripod.