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Why does it feel like losing to just give up on a pointless argument? Like, to be clear, a truly pointless argument, that I am equally at fault for continuing.
but any time I walk away, because I know nothing is being accomplished, and I'm probably annoying others, I feel annoyed when I see them post one more response. and I feel like when i don't respond, I'm "Letting them win" by letting them get the last word. no matter how many times I tell myself it doesn't matter, it still annoys me.
I think it's because I wasn't "allowed to be right" a lot growing up, so when I feel passionately, even on something unimportant, I did my heels in.
Maybe frame it this way:
You know that visual illusion with the two lines, one of which has arrows pointing out and the other in?
This one, sort of ascii rendered:
<----->
>-----<
And you know how even though you can measure the two lines and know they are exactly the same length your brain still interprets the visual data as one of the lines being long than the other?
Well, maybe that's what this feeling of 'losing' is. So you're not 'wrong' to feel annoyed. You're not 'right' to feel annoyed either. It's just your particular cognitive apparatus is prone to seeing one line as longer than another, even if another part of the same apparatus knows they're identical.
So what to do with that?
I've found it helpful to just acknowledge the emotion without self-judgment. "Hey, I'm super annoyed right now because someone is wrong on the internet. It's that old double-lines thing again. What are you gonna do? Every cognitive apparatus is tuned for something and therefore contains errors and illusions. I'll just note this annoyance and wait till my mind stops harping on about it."
It takes a lot of practice and after decades I still can get hooked. Think of it as learning a new skill--no matter how good you get at something, sometimes you might still make a n00b mistake. The goal is, on average, to get better at noticing and then letting the feeling just wander off when it gets bored of poking your brain parts.
Just my thoughts. Then again, I'm the guy who started a thread called "Failed Will Saves Against Pedantry" so... there's that...