OP is behaving cruelly. No one should brag about treating another person like this. The third reblogger is spot on that conversations aren’t battlefields – you don’t “win” by shaming or rebuking your interlocutor into silence.
That said, I’m really not fond of statements like “kindness is free”, or “it costs zero dollars to be nice”, or any other permutation. Kindness isn’t free. No person has a limitless capacity for patience and understanding. To ignore that is to ignore the huge amount of work – yes, work – that humans put into cultivating compassion for others. And it not-so-implicitly shames people for whom that work isn’t easy.
Listening to someone infodump is not effortless. As an avid infodumper myself, I am always mindful that people willing to listen to me ramble are doing me a kindness. Hanging onto a topic that doesn’t interest you in the slightest, especially when the infodumper is speaking quickly or making leaps that don’t make sense to you, takes effort. That doesn’t make it ~emotional labor~, and it doesn’t mean you’re entitled to rudeness or to bragging about making someone “visibly uncomfortable”, but it’s not free. It’s a competing access need.
Responding with eye rolls or stony silence when I ramble about historical clothing is disrespectful, but so is expecting limitless attention. “Just listen! It’s not hard!” elides that. And it ignores the fact that the neurodivergences that make people prone to infodumping are often the same ones that make it hard to listen intently.
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