I get insulted ALL THE TIME for taking something fallacious someone else has said and applying logic and good debate form to it. They'll call me names and try to change the subject for several minutes until they realize I'm not falling for it, get their last word (usually more name-calling), and put me on /ignore. However, only on extremely rare occasions will such a person ever actually address any of the issues I bring up. Usually when they do we part on good terms. I like to hope any other witnesses present could see their inability to defend their statement or admit its flaws.
I once got called a pedant and got to learn what that word means. Oh yes, I am one, and it's amazing how much energy people will exert to debase me when it would have taken a fraction to avoid whatever fallacy got my attention in the first place.
As a specific example, I was in a raid finder group in World of Warcraft recently, and we were about to pull Yor'sahj, the "slime boss." For those unfamiliar, the mechanics of the boss are that he summons a random set of 3 (out of 6) colored slimes and each color represents an ability the boss will get temporarily if they reach him. You can only kill one slime each time they appear so you have to choose which ability you want to prevent and the whole raid has to help kill it before it reaches the boss. In raid finder (which is the lowest difficulty) a simple priority order works fine and you simply attack the slime with the highest priority.
Nobody else was announcing any order, so I announced the one I use, and without any word to the contrary from the raid, the tank pulled and we got started. About halfway through, a green and yellow slime both appeared, and as I had put yellow at higher priority the entire raid began heading to yellow. Then some self-important B.E.P. asshole started yelling
GREEN
GREEN
GREEN
in all caps spamming the raid chat and half the raid switched targets. I didn't have time to argue, I need to be doing all the damage I can especially now that half the raid stopped helping, but because of his intervention NEITHER slime died and we had to go through a phase with 3 different abilities active, almost causing a wipe. After that I told him if he had a better order in mind he should bring it up before the pull, and that it was never a good idea to change the order mid fight (because of exactly what happened, the confusion threw the raid into chaos and neither slime died).
His answer? That green was the way "everyone" does it and the raid was going to go to green anyway because that's how "everyone" knows the fight, completely disregarding the fact that he has not met even 1% of the WoW playerbase, and that I actually SAW at least 80% of the raid following me before he started spamming. Again, I made the point that it doesn't matter what the "normal" way is you cannot change the order midfight or it will be chaos, but he simply persisted that his order was the "right" way and that my anecdotal evidence about the order commonly used was inferior to his anecdotal evidence. Also, WoW players are too stupid to be trusted to read chat or stick to a plan and will do whatever they want (he's basically insulting the entire raid right in front of them now, because they did what he told them to do). According to him I was an idiot for saying that sticking to a less-than-optimal order was better than changing plans at the last possible second. The non-gaming equivalent would be to say that vehicles with passengers belong in the carpool lane, so it is better to cut across a packed highway than to stay in the lane you're in. We ended up arguing the rest of the raid, and nobody else said a word.
