I do and I don't. The word retarded has become more charged than it was when I was younger, and I think people are more sensitive to it now leading to getting muted for a single use. I won't be using that again on flagamuffin's posts (or apparently any words as I'm muted) just because it detracts from the point I'm trying to make. However, the abstract stupidity of the silly comparison did not warrant me explaining that is ludicrous hyperbole. It would be condescending to explain every joke you make, right? And moreover, it's kind of silly to get muted for expressing a valid point of view because someone else didn't like how you phrased it. That article is not well-researched and it uses poor science and scare tactics to drum up something you would see on Fox News. "Next at 10, is Asparagus giving you brain damage?" No. It's not. Millions of people eat it all the time and we aren't walking around with brain damage akin to taking a career's worth of hits in the NFL.
The problem here is that you started out rude without actually making a point. Why should flagamuffin bother to respond? You haven't given anything valuable as input yet. You didn't "express a valid point of view", you straight up insulted the other person for something that you don't even know they believe. The discussion has nowhere to go after that but down. Start with a well-reasoned contradiction. Start with "Millions of people eat it all the time and we aren't walking around with brain damage akin to taking a career's worth of hits in the NFL." Start with "That article is not well-researched and it uses poor science and scare tactics to drum up something you would see on Fox News." Don't start with the equivalent of "You and your opinions are stupid". It's not conducive to polite discussion. It's clearly unacceptable. More to the point, what sort of conversation were you trying to create with that comment? What positive reaction were you hoping for?it's kind of silly to get muted for expressing a valid point of view because someone else didn't like how you phrased it
I suppose that if they, or yourself, did not find anything of worth then they can ignore the response altogether. But other people did immediately get the reaction that I was going for which is to point out the poor nature of the article in an incisive and humorous way. By simply reiterating the author's words for a second review out of the context of the article, a reader can immediately realize that the comparison does not make sense, and then think more critically about the article. We can't just take science at face value, that's the best part about science. The reply was shared twice before I was muted. I think flagamuffin was a little heavy handed instead of actually discussing this like you have.