I remember your comment! And appreciated your input. I still think only you and I understood what I was talking about in that thread, though... :-)

...I guess I just don't see why a conversation should "devolve" because someone chose to "rip" the other person's argument "to shreds" instead of furthering the discussion, the latter of which can sometimes require a little more finesse...

It's a defensive response when someone blows holes in your comment, logic, or presentation.

Professional writers are used to getting feedback on their writing, logic, and how the ideas are presented. We take editing at face value, and try to lock our hearts/feelings away in a fireproof safe before reading the editors' notes. It's part of the job.

But non-professional writers feel very personally attacked when their argument/logic/position is shown to be flawed in some way.

Rarely, if ever, do they come back with a better-framed argument, or rewording their position to be clearer and more legible by people with different backgrounds and biases.

The knee-jerk natural reaction is to punch back, because they feel like the feedback was an attack. They are retaliating.

So things devolve into them being rude, because they don't have the same agility with words that their 'attacker' has... so they resort to their base instincts: to fling poo instead of learning where their argyment was deficient and iterating on their debate tactics or points.

(Funny aside: I am active in several "helpful" sub-reddits where people ask questions, and look to others for answers. I am frequently accused of being a shill for a product/person/company because my writing style is informative, thorough, and I use formatting like bold section headers, italicized notes, and links to sources. But it's just a side effect of the nature of my work as a writer. That's what I do for a living; present ideas in a clear and detailed manner for specific audiences. I want my answers to be useful to as broad a group of people as possible, and easy to read. So I use layout and presentation cues most commonly found in marketing blather. So people often flag my account as spam or whatever, and the mods have to step in and smack down my haters.)