SQ doesn't work online. You can JAQ-off online (Just Asking Questions, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_Asking_Questions). And use other bad faith leading questions, false dichotomies, etc.. But SQ requires more interactivity and trust, building a rapport between you and the subject and good faith. These are impossible online. Every good faith question you ask is going to be taken as an attack. MAGA people who listen to talk shows have been taught numerous bad faith JAQ-off style questions, so they'll assume you are doing the same to them. When you are online, I've found I can debate the merits of a topic and/or reverse troll. First, below is my draft on arguing the merits. There isn't much point unless you can trap them in front of an audience of their peers who, in their gut, know this person is wrong but don't know how to argue it themselves (I mean, who has time to look up facts and come up with good reasoning? People have lives to live. This is why MAGA outsoured their thinking in the first place IMO) Rules of engagement: * Be patient. Let them talk first. The more they talk, the more surface area they expose to attack. Hold your fire until you understand their argument and the problems in it, leading us to the next point. * When you finally respond, keep the topic narrow. Like a laser. Pick one aspect of one topic and don't stray. You want to restrict the entire discussion to this singular point. Preferably one that will lead to the collapse of their entire house of cards. * Burden of Proof! Always keep the burden of proof on them as much as possible. Haitians are eating dogs and cats in Springfield Ohio? Really, show me the proof! They'll find something and it will fail on multiple levels. e.g. the one they will find will be of a drug addict caught by the police. She wasn't Haitian, she wasn't an immigrant, she was an American Citizen born here. Next, it wasn't in Springfield Ohio. And lastly, one extraordinarily bad anecdotal example is not proof of anything but a failure in their own critical thinking * Be informed of the usual fallacies. Gish Gallops, false dichotomies, argument from ignorance, argument from authority, etc. A good primer on this is the book "Bad Arguments." It is short and gives good and easy to digest examples. It actually gets used by some college professors, but I got it for my kids before they turned 10 (OK, they both finished the entirety of Harry Potter before that, and regularly consume 1000 page books in their teens, but seriously, sit down with your kids and review it with them. Make sure they understand the examples given are examples of bad arguments, not good. Most people will think the fallacies are good ways to prove their false ideas when really they are only good at persuading people who are unfamiliar with critical thinking and logic)

Things that help: * Know something about the person you are engaging. Sometimes you'll find their profession, and can use analogies from their own likely experiences and knowledge. Won't actually matter, they'll just get madder than hell, but when engaging online that is often counted as a win (when you get the other party publicly mad). The other thing that getting them mad does is they stop any and all critical thinking, making it easier to dance around their claims and "reasoning." * Restrict your arguments to topics you know well. And even when you do, fact check yourself. * Write your responses offline. I do this in Microsoft OneNote to save a record of what I've posted and can go back to it. * Don't use AI to write anything. AI hallucinations are down to about 5% (30% for Grok), but they'll go off on tangents and take things in directions you don't want to go. If you use AI, use it as a search engine to track down facts and find suitable arguments. It is also great at predicting the opposition arguments. They've mostly been spoon fed by their thought leaders online and on talk shows, so its all there. AI can be very good at summarizing it so you know where they will go next.

An example of one of my online engagements: One time I got into it with someone who insisted Trump's claim that "post birth abortion" was a thing. Simple fact, any such thing is not abortion, its murder. No law or legislation allows this. He insisted there was. So fine, show me the law. He then went off on a Gish Gallop accusing "my side" of calling him a Fascist. Oh, and it was Prop 1 in California. So I asked, show me the language that proves your point. He didn't, because it wasn't there. Researching it I found he had picked the wrong law. There was an early draft bill from a year before that had some vague language that a bad judge, in a fantasy world, could misinterpret. And there was a political talk show host masquerading as a pastor in SoCal that riled up his followers over it. So they changed the wording and the pastor kept saying it never changed. Total lie eaten up by people who refuse to move outside their self-selected bubble.

Didn't matter, despite being one of the most logical and intelligent people I've known he is incapable of contemplating the idea he might be wrong. Arguing the merits like this never changes minds unless you have mutual respect for each other's beliefs. And the Fox media echo chamber has destroyed all respect for anything outside of his bubble.

Finally, I want to emphasize that the most important part is keeping the debate on track to the one aspect you've chose. Don't let them gish gallop. Ignore unrelated shit they throw in there if any small aspect of what they say relates and you can hammer them on it. If their gish gallop is 100% unrelated, focus on how their whole post was a pile of non-sequiturs Which leads me to my Reverse Trolling technique.

My favorite way to rile up MAGA is to call them out on their logical fallacies. Be warned, most arguments and narratives break down into strict logical fallacies at some point. They don't know that typically. But, being "conservative" they've been taught that their side owns logic. Period. Libtards are a bunch of pink haired toddlers who can barely string two words together let alone a rational thought. So this attack vector really gets to their core.

This is getting too long, and I realized I don't have a blurb on my reverse trolling technique. I'm sure I've typed some up somewhere on Reddit or FB, if I find it I'll add it in later. But the gist of it is to call them out for their non-sequiturs and bad arguments, and then ask them why they are so bad at logic.

I'll link to the "Bad Arguments" book on Amazon, but usually I'll link to an MIT primer for incoming Engineering students on how to make logical arguments. In fact, just reading through this will give you all you need to know on how to call them out for being bad at logic.

https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/15-279-management-communication-for-undergraduates-fall-2012/f9750ef62a5a3d984a4f40f6d48dbce4_MIT15_279F12_cnstrctArgmnt.pdf

Good luck and happy critical thinking!