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.
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
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
Did you do competitive debate? Like travel to other schools for debate and stuff?
Yeah for a few competitions. It was a lot of fun for the one year I was still in school to do it.