You don’t have to fall victim to this if you don’t want to. I usually post what I have on my mind, even when I expect most repliers to performatively tell me how stupid I am. I say “performatively” because they aren’t even trying to convince me. They’re showing off their more orthodox beliefs to the collective. This is why if you go through my post history, you’ll find that I have a significant number of popular comments (I’m clever and funny, or so I like to think) but frequent very unpopular comments too.

I get thoughtful responses to my unpopular comments often enough to keep things interesting for me, and I don’t respect the performative responses enough for them to bruise my ego.