I think I have seen a recurring pattern in ppd where people are discussing an issue like cheating, single moms, n count but it eventually devolves into people making it personal.

If a person makes a point about men or women on average, a reply would ask him if he personally would date single moms. If he personally cares about n count. If he is an incel or a virgin.

I wonder if this adds any value to the debate? Some ideas I have for why it happens is,

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1) People are not really debating to understand the topic, the consequences or change their mind. They like to troll, flame and have fun making it personal.

2) People think that the answer matters because it shows a conflict of interest or hypocrisy. For example if a single mom is saying single dads are not worth dating in one comment, then if they argue single moms should not be disadvantaged elsewhere the person is trying to bring to everyone's attention that this person is not self consistent in their views.

3) As Aristotle famously said there are 3 modes of persuasion. Since most people in ppd have already made up their mind what the answer is, it is a matter of winning the argument and persuading others who are listening. Instead of only relying on logos, people are using ethos to destroy the credibility of the speaker. If the person once mentioned something politically incorrect that reflects badly on his character or by bringing attention to his occupation, educational qualifications, you can try to avoid having to address the point the person raised. This is also a form of pathos where you are trying to win over the audience's emotions.

4) It helps to put a face or human behind the reddit handle. By making it personal, you get an idea of the context behind the person's comment. It helps to undersand the culture he is from, if they are worth engaging with or is an obvious troll.

5) Most people find it hard to keep the discussion at an abstract level - it feels disconnected from their life to discuss n count in general, or dating single moms in general, when there is just so much diversity. Like people say, what constitutes an increment to an n count? people have different definitions, so it becomes hard to have a discussion on that level where these words don't have a clear meaning. Most people can't abstract out a number intuitively given many people and details of their sexual past. So to make the discussion meaningful they dig deeper into the concrete and talk about actual people and thier sexual history and the n count you might assign and how you would judge that single individual. By relying ancedotal evidence, personal stories and concrete cases they hope to get a better idea of the words so that they can later generalize?

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I am wondering if you all also noticed this pattern? if there are any additional points I might have missed that explains why people do this? overall do you think it contributes positively to debate and discussion?

Finally do women do it more than men? I feel like men are more comfortable with seeing things as a general rule while women feel like that does not make sense to treat all these unique instances as part of a larger class.