Anything Can Be Made To Sound Ridiculous

The old reductio ad absurdum: stating an opponent's argument in a weak manner in order to build an easily destroyed strawman.

 

I suppose we've all been guilty of that at one time or another. For some, sadly, it is a habit. Hopefully most of us just sometimes get carried away with our enthusiasm.

 

I did a Google search of the phrase "anything can be made to sound ridiculous" and found a rich and colorful selection of appeals to that thought variously stated:

 

Anything can be made to sound ridiculous if said with a certain tone....

 

Anything can be made to sound ridiculous if it is sufficiently distorted....

 

Anything can be made to sound ridiculous if you're willing to lie about it....

 

Anything can be made to sound ridiculous. A Rembrandt etching could, after all, be described as a piece of torn paper into which a scratched piece of metal has been pressed.

 

Almost anything can be made to sound ridiculous by dumbing it down in such a
manner.

 

By the way, notice how anything can be made to sound ridiculous if you phrase it the right way?

 

Anything can be made to sound ridiculous by gutting them of their meaning and
value....

 

Anything can be made to sound ridiculous if you try.

 

Almost anything can be made to sound ridiculous when it is mocked by
exaggerating it to the extreme.

 

Anything can be made to sound ridiculous and petty if the debaters are skilled
enough at rhetoric.

 

But anything can be made to sound ridiculous if it is taken out of context and
subjected to the reductionist approach.

 

Part of my point is that anything can be made to sound ridiculous or terrible if you word it the right way, and focus on some detail, taken out of context.

 

Using your sarcasm, anything can be made to sound ridiculous.

 

Anything can be made to sound ridiculous or conspiratorial if you try hard enough.

 

Well yeah, I mean if you're gonna cherrypick quotes like that, then anything can be made to sound ridiculous.

 

Anything can be made to sound ridiculous. It's in the eye of the beholder.

 

I think we bloggers are prone to doing this, especially when we are riding our hobby horses. Alas, we are only human.