Tactical Empathy

Empathy is pretty neat. It's one of those things that goes rarely discussed, but I would argue it's pretty essential for the survival of our species. I feel bad when other people are sad, therefore, I'm biologically motivated to avoid hurting others. When other people are struggling, I feel sorry for them, and therefore I feel motivated to help people worse off than me. And I think that's very neat and fun. But empathy can also be a trap, much like anything that predisposes you to feel a certain way. Corporations are more than happy to try and make you feel bad in order to get you to spend more. Scammers constantly try and get you to feel empathetic to get you to divert from your hard earned money. Facebook AI slop is all about a starving child in Africa or a disabled veteran with tags like "it's my birthday and nobody cares" or "I'm really sick and it's my dream to share this statue of lobster jesus made out of sand and coca cola bottles with the world". 

Relatedly, empathy is also extremely valuable when it comes to debates.

See, here's the thing. When you're talking with another person, regardless of context, it helps to have common understandings to build off of. For starters, language. Someone monolingual in Chinese and me are going to have a very hard time having a conversation with each other. Of course, body language can help, but that's a different article. No, instead, we can have a foundation of word language, to be able to talk about abstract things, or things that aren't currently in our immediate surroundings, in a way all parties understand. When speaking to another English speaker, we can get much more complicated ideas communicated between each other. But even then, there's a lot of context to be had. If I say that I want to "take a kip to cop a cheeky nando" that is English, but it's also gibberish to a lot of people. Or if I say "I went 10/0 with no jungle pressure while enemy ganked six times and we still soul swept 'cause I carried hard", that's English, but it's also league of legends so if you don't play that you probably don't really know what I'm saying either. You still need to know what the other person is talking about, even if in essence you both understand words.

Say I say "animals can consent". That's probably not all that divisive of a statement to the people reading this magazine. But, to people who aren't zoos, they read that same sentence and it means something else. If you have a canine partner whose genitals haven't been mutilated and who loves getting down, you know animals can and do ask for pleasure of that fashion. But, if you only ever had a dog with your parents and the dog was a pug who got snipped half way through puberty, the idea of animals desiring, much less enjoying sex is outrageous. It's all a matter of the person's perspective. The place they reached through their personal experiences that carved out their world view. 

If two people with different perspectives like that try and argue, it sounds much more like two people screaming at a wall together rather than a productive conversation. Maybe owning losers to farm clicks is a great way to make content, but rarely is it the best way to actually change anyone's minds.

So, how do you speak the same language? Empathy. Here's the thing. Most people think of empathy as something that happens to them. You experience a scenario, you feel the feeling. But empathy is also something you can actively choose to do. You can put yourself in another person's shoes, understand what they understand, feel what they're feeling. And when you do that, you can speak to them in a way where they actually hear what you're saying. 

Let's do a quick example here. You're scrolling on Twitter when you see someone left a comment on your post saying "I hope you die". Not very nice. You click on their profile and they seem like a random average joe. They have a couple hundred followers, their profile picture is a selfie of them on the beach, they mostly talk about current events and their favorite sports teams. Obviously, there's a gut reaction to someone telling you something so awful. And while telling someone to kill themselves is objectively bad, let's use a little bit of tactical empathy here to get a better understanding of the situation. 

Who is this person? We don't know a lot, but we know a couple things. They aren't a celebrity, they aren't someone who seems all that ingrained in more weird online spaces, they just seem like a normal person. Chances are, that means this is likely the first time they've come across a zoophile before. Now, try and put your own experience behind you for a second here and think about what the average person knows about zoophiles: nothing. So, it's easy for this person to start imagining whatever they want to, to fill in the blanks about zoos. They're violent. They're abusers. They're usually tied up in other crimes. They take advantage of animals, etcetc. None of those things are true, but that doesn't matter if that's what this person believes. To this person, it's like one day they were walking home from work and they just happened to come across someone on the corner selling meth. They likely had an immediate, visceral response upon seeing something they understand to be evil. 

They also saw it on the internet, a place where people have much lower inhibitions about what they will and won't say in general. Chances are they would never come up and say "I hope you die" to you in person, but under the guise of social media, people are a lot more vitriolic. This is actually a feature of social media, by the way. On Twitter, while there is a like button, a quick press to show you enjoy something, there's no dislike button. So if someone is displeased and wants to say so, they need to actually type out a comment. And "I hope you die" is about the closest to dropping a quick dislike as there is out there in this day and age. They probably don't even want you to die, they just don't like who you are and what you're saying. 

So what can we do with that information? Well, it helps us choose how we want to reply. We understand the perspective they're coming from, we can speak the same language as them. So what do we say? Hopping into debate mode isn't likely to get us anywhere. The person really isn't all that engaged. Maybe we can bait them into an argument, but it'll be hard to really do anything from there. What if instead we tried to inform them of the existence of another side to this discussion. Maybe we link them to the Zooey Dot Pub FAQ, or Zooier Than Thou's zoo 101 episode, or the Taboo Science video, or any other resources out there. Give them a link and say something like "If you want to know who zoos REALLY are and not just the mainstream narrative, check this out" or something. A lot of the times they don't click it, but I think that has a better chance than trying to debate bro them. That said, if you did want to talk with them directly, you can also use your empathy to try and dig a path into that conversation. You can say something like "Hey, I totally understand why you feel the way you do about zoos, but what about us is your problem?" That way you can actually get into a conversation if they're so inclined. I want to stress, how you do this is important. Replying with aggression is going to lead to more aggression. Replying with curiosity and openness is going to get the same.

Examine why they feel the way they do. The mindset they likely have. What they were hoping to get from leaving that reply. What you can do in order to get around whatever their preconceptions are. Empathy is all about how you can relate to the other person, so really dig in. If you can find a way to connect with them emotionally, and have a real conversation, you're going to have a much easier job convincing them of your side of an argument. Or at the very least, accepting the possibility of another narrative, which is plenty given the way zoosexuality is currently viewed. If someone starts a conversation with "All zoos are evil", and through making a real human connection you can bring them to "I don't support zoos but I get they aren't all evil", that's a HUGE win. And you don't even need to "prove" anything to get there. All you need to do is be empathetic to the way they're feeling.

This kind of tactical empathy is only more effective the more you understand the person that you're talking to, and is something that you can continue to use mid conversation as well. For instance, say that you learn that the person you're talking with actually has a dog, and that they consider themselves a great pet owner. You can start to make comments to that end, and frame your counter arguments and questions around that, saying things like "I don't know about you, but if my dog was in my house as it was burning to the ground, I'd be running in to help them." Or "Are you able to tell when your dog is looking to go for a walk? What about when they're hungry? Isn't that them communicating with you?" Framing the experience around things they've seen and done is going to make them consider much more specifically than if you try and make comparisons about yourself and your experiences. 

You can also use empathy to know when a conversation isn't worth having. Everyone gets stuck sometimes. You find yourself in a situation where you stubbornly dig your heels in and just get mad, even if later you realize you were being kinda hot headed. At least, I hope that's an experience that's happened to everyone or I might just be an asshole. If you can tell the person you're talking to is feeling that way, instead of trying to directly fight them, maybe the better thing to do is just disengage from the conversation. Trying to push when they aren't looking to move is just an exercise in frustration. Maybe choose not to reply, and come back to the topic in a few hours, or the next day. Maybe just link them a more in depth resource and tell them if they want to learn more they should check it out. Don't waste your time. 

We're not going to change the world without empathy. There's no way we can reddit "um actually" people into taking our stance. The only way we can change people's minds is by making a real connection with them, and that starts with putting ourselves in their shoes. Maybe you disagree with them, maybe you think they're a bad person. You can always still choose to look at things from their perspective. And when you do that, you know what to aim for.



Article written by Tarro (October 2025)

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