Broadly speaking it sounds a bit like Antitrust https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antitrust_(film)

But I haven’t seen it in quite a while so I’m not sure how well specifics line up.

There were lots of games back then. And many of them were as bad or worse than the shittiest shovelware and template swaps we’ve got today.

Thing is, most people don’t remember the 200 Action Games 3 disc pack at the bottom of the bargain bin cause they sucked.

I’m not disputing that there is more “stuff” these days by raw numbers, with the barrier to creation and distribution of games and such dramatically lowered by ubiquitous and easy to use tooling. But I bet the ratios of good games to shitty games won’t have changed too terribly much over the years.

DMVs are sometimes where states will dump troublesome or underperforming employees they can’t outright fire.

On the other end, the DMV is one of the places where employees have a job interacting with the public for sometimes-complex transactions. And, generally speaking, the public is dumb, unpleasant, and unprepared. Especially when dealing with low-level government beaurocrats who are telling them something they don’t want to hear.

Yeah, I like that. After being able to recognize and validate claims, being able to verify the validity (at least logically if not factually) of any conclusions drawn from those claims seems like a good next step.

I dunno. For someone just starting to want to think critically during discussions of when reading things, asking them to get serious in the academic pursuit of logic and argument theory might not be the way. For one, it’s probably just asking for them to get stalled in the sort of dunning kruger zone of identifying fallacies and stopping there.

Especially when such behavior is already endemic to the internet and many platforms have feedback loops designed to reward this behavior. Just dunk on 'em and move on - watch the upvotes and retweets roll in.

I definitely don’t want discourage OP from learning anything, but I do want to be careful in what direction we point a beginner.

I think maybe learning to find good sources of information and verify claims might be a better first step. That doesn’t give OP any shortcuts I’m discussions, which is good. Then they may begin to notice different patterns or forms of discussion and at that point they can start to classify them and learn about them if they see fit.

Agreed. OP should be working on critical thinking skills in general and not specifically focusing on logical fallacies.

Logical fallacies and argumentation theory in general certainly have their place. But unless you’re taking part in a debate club or otherwise getting really really deep into these topics, they may do you more harm than good in thinking critically and having productive discussions.

The reddit (and, previously, slashdot) obsession with logical fallacies has been almost entirely as a way to prevent critical thinking and end discussion rather than promoting either.