A contrarian rejects popular opinion, not to be antagonizing, but in an effort to show that group think may be off slightly. It is more an argument about what may be right (or what is dogmatic), than just being difficult to be difficult.

People who are difficult to be difficult are just assholes. Contrarians frequently get put in that bucket, but have different motives. Keep in mind the term is used a lot in investment.

For example, stating children should go back to school this fall works within "popular" demand or belief that masks are a solution to spread. A contrarian would indicate an abundance of caution about what is yet to be known about how this is spread, and that perhaps masks don't exactly work the way we think they do.

Holding a contrary view that masks don't work doesn't make someone an asshole, but it could be viewed that way if the ones who disagree are unable to come to a conclusion contrary to that view based on empirical evidence, and not overwhelming abundance of popular opinion based on irrational understanding.

Depending on the age of the persons involved, this could actually be healthy. When I first learned about logical fallacies I could not keep my mouth shut. Everyone was a moron and dag nabit I knew exactly why. After a few months of pissing everyone off, I settled down in to a "You can be wrong if you want," kind of mentality.

I wish some of this energy could be channeled into creating forum software that explicitly recognized and accounted for logical fallacies.

It would help clean up a lot of shit (same as comment voting). It's not a panacea (just as voting isn't) but it would help to be able to flag/confirm/reject logical fallacies in textual online arguments.

Seems like that would require an understanding of language that far exceeds the current state of the art. And much of the time logic doesn't even apply because the text is incoherent.

You don't need that. You can use humans to flag and verify logical fallacies. The computer can just be tasked with labeling.