What’s the point of commenting on social media or even on our own website?

I doubt anyone has ever changed their minds about anything substantial because of something they’ve read in a 280-character tweet.

I’m really talking about people who tweet about politics.

Most Twitterers follow people with similar views to them, which entrenches their already-held opinions, making them more sure of them and more adamant that they’re right because they’ve read that many strangers see the world in the way that they do.

Some follow people they hate to get angry about them and to fire off a stinging tweet that will, at best, be ignored.

At worst, it will just make their combatant even more convinced they’re right.

We might pretend that we argue to seek out truth or persuade people of the righteousness of our view.

But that’s rubbish. Arguments are about emotion and ego. And most of us have fragile egos and won’t accept we’re wrong.

So what has constant arguing online achieved? It has made politics more polarised.

My left-leaning friends now lean more to the left because they hear the same sort of things again and again and this reinforces their own views. Hence Corbyn’s popularity.

Thinking about it, I don’t have any right-leaning friends. But the popularity of Brexit and Donald Trump suggests that something similar is happening on that side of politics.

Sharing views on social media ends up in a spiral of anger.

The same is true, I’m afraid, of the people who comment on our own site.

Many of them haven’t read the story before they start bashing away on their keyboards, venting more spleen than you can shake a cliche at.

What does it achieve? Higher blood pressure, maybe.

A heightened form of political debate? Definitely not.

Indeed, it can be counterproductive.

The recent survey of satisfaction with the patient transfer service saw only 14 complaints lodged. Yet we’ve seen many more on social media.

Those social media moaners have shared their views with only a handful of people, not the people who might be able to do anything about their complaints.

Sensible people have learned not to read the bottom half of the internet, the place where comments normally end up. Disjointed Facebook or Twitter threads are as bad.

But a letter in one of our papers will be read in a quarter of Manx households. It might be old-fashioned but it’s far more effective if you really want a lot of people to understand your opinions.

Meanwhile, I shall continue to tweet.

I’ll promote our papers, share jokes from the Beano and Viz and perhaps tell an occasional joke of my own.

I won’t share any political views.

Who cares what I think anyway?

Anyone who’s got this far in the column must really be wondering that.

But I shan’t complain.

The way to get the best of an argument is not to have one in the first place.