I see it’s hard for you to let go of the idea that popular use makes something correct, since you are still repeating this fallacy. Yes, I know I can Google for incorrect notions and misconceptions and find that some are very popular or even of standard use (mainly in US-based websites; you’d be surprised how this is much less prevalent in some other languages, notably French.) For example, if you Google any commonly used statement properly containing the word “its”, you may find more results where the word is incorrectly spelled “it’s.”

If anyone is making this about semantics, you are. I am making this about logic. Winning implies success and losing implies failure, all of which imply *closure*—by any definition. That’s just it; an argument is an exchange of ideas, meant for the participants to acknowledge one another’s different positions on a given premise—it *has* no closure: If your opponent concedes or retires, you still don’t know that you were right and they were wrong, or that you weren’t both wrong. The argument itself is still in motion and always will be, as there’s no definite conclusion to it, just different participants and new ideas. There’s no success, no failure; nothing substantial to gain from your opponent’s concession and nothing substantial for them to lose. If anything, all participants are successful as long as the discussion advances, since they’re gaining knowledge; they’re just not successful *at* the argument.

So as you can see, this isn’t a matter of semantics; the concept of victory, regardless of definition, is logically incompatible with the indefinite process that is argumentation. But let’s anecdotally assume for a second that it isn’t, that you’re correct, and that getting your opponent’s concession implies your victory and their defeat:
- Why would your opponent ever openly concede an argument, if it means failing or losing? No sane person wants to fail or lose. Is everyone who’s ever conceded an argument (which is probably just about every human being who could ever talk) this irrational?
- If your opponent suddenly changes his position in favor of yours but refuses to ever let anyone know about it, either retiring from the debate without a word or continuing it with bogus arguments, do you still win? But how can you win if you don’t know that you won, and never will? It’s self-contradictory. Also, what exactly does he lose? He gained a new viewpoint and used it to update his frame of mind; that’s almost the opposite of losing.

See the inherent logical inconsistencies your idea involves?

Besides, ask around, and you may find that those who assign the notion of victory to said ‘closure’ of an argument do not, as you seem to suggest, use it as a shorter and more ‘natural’ alternative to “getting the opponent to concede an argument,” but rather, they use it as an emotional response to a vaguely interpreted effect their final argument had on their opponent, and do so with the same definition of the word as they would typically use to describe the result of a basketball game—the literal one. Can you honestly tell me that “I won the argument because they admitted they were wrong” doesn’t sound ridiculous to you? Let alone “because they stopped replying.”

Case in point, your “case in point” is invalid: Your conclusion from comparing those Google results is a confirmation bias, since you’re pitting the notion of “winning an argument” against the false-alternative of “getting to concede an argument” and not taking into account other alternatives, such as the lack of mention at all of closure or any notion of achievement in an argument. You’ll find, by looking around, that an argumentative discussion typically doesn’t end with someone declaring victory or success, defeat or failure of their opponent, or any sort of closure, regardless of whether this opponent conceded or retired from the argument. There is, then, no evidence that most people even consider it as such. Since the *absence* of a comment isn’t something you can Google, your way of comparing the popularity of these different notions is flawed. You’re making the double logical error of concluding something to be true because other people say it is and because you’re unable or refuse to think of non-superficial alternatives.

I won’t take a stab at your cartoon. Not only because I have no interest in making comic strips, not only because—as I’ve previously demonstrated—the problem isn’t semantics, but also because the subliminal concept it’s all based on has comical value only for the naive minds who think arguments magically becomes pointless (let alone, significantly different) when you have them online. To me, this cartoon is just a huge non-sequitur.