One of my favorite philosophy teachers described philosophical criticism as the process of being supremely gracious--of granting your opponent all manner of fanciful and absurd things, and then of peering through the cloud of absurdity and taking small issue with just one thing, preferably a small one, and politely, such that as much as possible of the absurdity collapses. And then you see how big of a thing can be built in such an environment.

I can see how people trying to play this game and doing so poorly might end up being cruel, but the core of is making space for each other's thoughts and playing along for a while, which is anything but.