I got bored one day and decided to spend an evening going through a full discourse with somebody who was using the gamified rhetoric, essentially making a counter point and dropping a link with a "study" that had a title and synopsis which sounded like it backed up his claim.

I sat down and read every...single...link.

What I discovered was that not only had he clearly not read anything he'd posted but that what is allowed to pass for a publishable study is borderline laughable.

After going through it and then realizing that several "prominent voices" on my assorted feeds use the exact same approach, it became apparent that these folks only goal was to keep a conversation thread going in order to amplify the headline reach of a post. Slightly more sophisticated spamming essentially. The only solution was to realize what was happening and refuse to engage.

Now the only conversations I'll have about topics online are a) off of Facebook and b) logical conversations that can be had without link bombing.

The more conversations I've been involved in, the more I've realized that if it seems like what's being said doesn't add up...there's usually a reason.