> Pretty much anytime the word "you," is used, it's nearly always the start of an ad hominem.

To me, this is nonsense. Your definition of ad hominem is way too broad. The sentence was:

You’ve taken a tweet and you’re now trying to define a narrow window of acceptable discussion about the tweet based on it’s title.

From the Wikipedia page:

> Fallacious ad hominem reasoning occurs where the validity of an argument is not based on deduction or syllogism, but on an attribute of the person putting it forward.

The sentence is not based on an attribute of your character. It is stating that your logic is as follows:

1. There exist sets A, B and C.

2. Set A = { a, a, z }

3. Set B = { a, b, y }

4. Set C = { a, c, x }

5. The title of the tweet is “a, z”.

6. Therefore, all discussion must be about Set A.

That however, is both a pain in the arse to read and write so we just say:

You’ve taken a tweet and you’re now trying to define a narrow window of acceptable discussion about the tweet based on it’s title.

Claiming a fallacy and saying I’ve attacked you and not your argument because I’ve used the word “you” is bad faith debating. We don’t have days to sit around writing all our arguments out in formal logic, especially in an online forum.

In my opinion, your straw man definition is accurate but again you’re using it with a scope that is way too broad. You’re using the control fallacy to try and restrict the scope of the debate to the very first point. Any criticisms of the defences you use to defend your original position, or my criticisms of your criticisms of my defences, you are labelling straw men because they are not about the very first point you made. We can’t get back to discussing the original point because we’re disagreeing about our disagreement. This doesn’t make them “straw men”. In order to get back on track the disagreements need to be resolved first.

An analogy might be two archers firing at a target. You hit the target, but I notice that you’ve stepped over the agreed upon line in order to do so. You then say this is a straw man because it’s not about hitting the target. I disagree because the rules of the game are that you need to be behind the line to take the shot. You then claim this is another straw man and that I’m using the control fallacy because I’m stating one of the game rules. Meanwhile you’re guilty of the control fallacy yourself because simply by disagreeing with the rule you’re setting your own rule which is that the rules don’t apply to you.

On to, the mind reading fallacy. You state:

> While the OP title claims realism, what they meant were that the graphics are improved and exceptional

If this isn’t an example of mind reading then I don’t know what is. But I call you out on it and you dismiss it an ad hominem, straw man, and control fallacy.

Finally, to your misapplication of fallacy of authority:

> Clearly this new version of CoD is graphically superior to previous versions, yet the criticism is focused on less than perfect minutia that probably also existed in or was inferior in previous versions.

As far as I can see it, people are debating what matters to them. What matters to you is clearly graphical superiority. If you became visually impaired tomorrow and were playing a game, would you care about the graphical superiority? I highly doubt it. You’d be much more focussed on the sound. Asking to consider other people’s experiences as being valid isn’t an appeal to authority, especially when the discussion thread is filled with subjective experience of a video game. If I’d have said, “you must consider sound of utmost importance because Hans Zimmer said it was the most important thing in video games” it would be an appeal to authority. But I didn’t. I simply stated that people value and perceive different things and will comment based on that and we shouldn’t be labelling them nitpickers, narcissists or haters without first finding out more about how they perceive the world.

No doubt you will dismiss this final argument as ad hominem because it’s got the word “you” in it and because I asked you to put yourself in someone else’s shoes which is irrelevant to the argument apparently. And of course I’ve committed the mind reading fallacy by assuming you wouldn’t care about graphical concerns if you were blind. And of course, according to your definitions, I’m also guilty of the control fallacy and a straw man because this isn’t about your original point but your defence of your point which is apparently above all criticism.

Are you enjoying this style of debate? Or shall we agree to speak like normal human beings again?