Horton's Law
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Horton's law is a law which states that eventually, if carried to its natural end, the loser of an argument in a blog conversation will threaten to exert negative influence on the real-life employment of the blogger in question. That is, the loser of the argument will mention that they're going to tell the blogger's boss, supervisory board, and or board of trustees about their blog activities which would ensure that their position at work would be threatened or terminated. In short, the loser of the argument tries to get the blog author to be dooced.
Horton's law is loosely based upon the logical fallacy of ad hominem which essentially states that one should directly address the arguments of their opponents rather than to attack the person advancing the argument. Horton's law is an example of one form of this logical fallacy regularly used in internet communication because it threatens the person (perhaps as a sort of scare tactic) rather than the argument in dispute.
This law is named after American blogger Greg Horton[1]. Horton's position has been threatened for his arguably controversial Christian views. Many of the threats against Horton's position revolve around alleged drug use, alcohol consumption, and vulgar language[2]. Perhaps surprisingly, Horton's alleged drug use arises largely from opposing visitors' misunderstanding of what a hookah pipe is meant to burn.
In fact, in 2006 Horton's position was terminated at Southern Nazarene University when readers at Ingrid Schleuter's weblog "Slice of Laodicea [3]" (now the Christian Research Network) outed him to his supervisors at that institution for openly smoking hookah pipe tobacco.
Similar Laws:
- Godwin's Law
- Reductio ad Hitlerum
- Kołakowski's Law
