Your side winnings debates is cathartic. I don’t think that can apply to debates generally.

I had the option to take either debate or speech class in high school. As someone with a pretty intense fear of public speaking I thought debate would be easier because I could hide behind the facts and the research. I found the class simultaneously boring and overwhelming, in that the topics they had us debating I didn’t give a shit about (high school me basically only loved World of Warcraft and little else) and I found the debate portion terrifying. We had to go to a certain number of debates during the school year (or semester or whatever) and I put it off and put it off because it was easier to just not think about it than sit there dreading it.

Finally the last month of the school year rolls around the the teacher says to me “listen, to pass this class you have to go to two debates. But you’re lucky because the only debates left are these round robin discussion format things and you won’t have to talk much, dominant voices will lead the conversation.”

So I went to the debates. The only thing I remember is one was kinda cool because we were talking about US war crimes in Iraq. I specifically remember a story about some soldiers who used the codenames from the film Resevoir Dogs to commit some crime. But the other debate I went to was attended by this absolute freak of a classmate. He was the son of a state senator or representative or somesuch and he’d gone to like every single debate the school offered. And the only thing I remember is when it was his turn to talk he gave a speech about how homosexuality should be banned because it leads to bestiality and pedophilia, which was my first exposure to those particular arguments. And the braver students yelled at him about it, and he was clearly enjoying it. I’m not sure if he was really a homophobe or if he was just trolling people.

Anyway, that was my only debate experience and it really turned me off the whole thing.

Also I’ve kinda overcome my fear of public speaking, in that I’ve found I can do if I prepare a shit-ton and I’ll usually write and memorize a speech that I will then improv off of in the moment. But since I don’t do public speaking a lot and am not practiced at it if I feel I haven’t prepared enough or just something throws me off I’ll go into total flight-or-fight response. I develop a stress-induced stutter (which, outside of public speaking I’ve never stuttered in my life) and a lot of the times all the words will just leave my mind and I’ll be utterly blank with no idea what to say. Which is where being prepared comes in handy. Though I felt from my last couple times doing it (which it’s been a couple years now) it is something I could grow comfortable with. When I felt confidant about it I wasn’t really that bad.

And in a situation where I had to give the same speech to multiple different groups of people it got so much easier with repetition. Like a comedian you learn which bits work and which don’t, what to streamline, what to riff off of.