Argumentative people !

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I don't know where to put this - it doesn't really have a forum fit. Feel free to shunt, mods.
I wonder if anyone has insight on how to deal with constantly argumentative and aggressive people? They start a fight about everything. Example - I made an idle comment that wood burning fires are designed weirdly, because they are set above the floor, so if you're sitting next to them, the heat burns your head off and your body freezes. Innocent yes? I meant it as a joke.
Someone else immediately attacks me, saying I can't expect there not to be a draft on the floor, because heat rises, there's no point constantly complaining about being cold because it's all my own fault, and if I could just behave like a normal person I would be sitting on a couch instead of down on the floor, then I wouldn't have these problems to complain about.
I said nothing about being cold, about drafts, or about any problem whatsoever. I was not complaining. I was just making a comment about the quirky design of wood fires FFS.
This is an example of what they do about everything. I literally can't open my mouth on any subject without someone starting a fight with me about the simplest, pettiest crap no one in their right minds would fight about. They start fights about what to have for dinner. They start fights about what movie to watch. They start fights about everything.
It's as if they're always just waiting for the opportunity to be aggressive and attack someone about absolutely anything. They even answer calls during the evening, when they have an answering machine to screen unwanted calls and anyone who legitimately calls them knows this - they answer the calls so they can be abusive toward tele-marketers. They scream at and abuse them. All they talk about when they are not directly starting fights is nastily bitching about other people or circumstances.
I try to have as little to do with these people as I can, but unfortunately at the moment I'm stuck in the same house with them until my own financial situation is a bit better off. I'm starting to avoid being at the house, but apart from working part-time, doing appointments, running as many errands and stalling cups of coffee out as I can, I sort of have nowhere else to be, and anything I may want to do usually either requires power for tech, or items that are at the house.
I'm trying to think up ways to be away much more so I just never see them (exercise!) but then there's always the fact that if I am away from the house, they start stalking me - sending me texts demanding to know where I am, what I'm doing, when I'm going to be back at the house. And I know ultimately, this will just start another fight when I do go back, for not informing them of my movements in advance.
I'm beginning to notice it influencing me, and becoming contagious - I find myself getting snappier and angrier more, I do complain more in general, and take much less a positive, happy, easygoing spin on life than I naturally would.
I'm working on moving on, but as I noted, financials make moving out right now impossible.
I would ordinarily just straight out ask why they have to make arguments and be aggressive toward me all the time and get whatever their problem is out in the open, but ironically in this situation, I know all that will do is start a fight, and solve nothing. They will just keep perpetuating the behaviour and I will keep getting it on me.
Anyone been involved with these kinds of people? What did you do? Ideas?

They seem to be everywhere, unfortunately, even at my workplace.

What I do is...
1. I try to avoid them as much as possible.
2. When I can't, I try to minimise contact with them. They say something to me, and if they're nice, I'll respond, if they're not, I'll just pretend they haven't said anything. They thrive on arguments, so by talking to them, you just feed their fire. If you stay quiet and ignore them, they'll be annoyed, and shut up eventually.
3. I don't give a damn. If they feel like arguing, that's their problem. They're free to find a better target, but I won't lose my s**t for them.
4. I look for ways to hurt them when it hurts. Sometimes I do my job in a way that the other person has to correct the mistakes I deliberately made, or I do my part of the job so quickly that this other person would surely be busy with his for the rest of the shift. Then I sit back with pride and look at him working.
5. If everything else fails, I turn the topic towards their flaws. For example: Them: "Why do you do this or that?" Me: "Because I'm not a lonely, miserable, always arguing little piece of jerk like you." It takes a lot of strength from me, so this is a last resort.

What I really wonder is how to stay a happy and easygoing person in such circumstances. Sometimes I feel like I'm turning into a sour, mean-willed, hostile jerk whose only aim is to give back all the pain people cause me in double. It's like I'm becoming Darth Vader step by step. Sometimes I even enjoy having some power over people, and being able to make them work more, or just annoy them in return for bothering me. Sometimes when someone is actually nice to me, I find that my only reaction is "what the hell?" and I move on. I don't like this new me, but I can't help it. Do you notice anything like this happening to you?

If somebody gets too argumentative, and seems never to want agree with me about anything, I just start ignoring that somebody. Nothing gets accomplished under these conditions.

Yar. Y'know, I'd forgotten this. It's like I noted - I seem to be being sucked into their way of thinking and doing things, and forgetting a higher road. Before when I saw these ones, and they tried to start shite, I would just refuse to engage, and if they didn't quit trying I would just tell them it is absolutely impossible to start a fight with me, so they better try elsewhere and stop wasting their time. Should go back to that and alternatively ignoring them.

This section not so much. It would strike me as unethical to start trying to hurt others just because they had done something annoying to me. And in that I am not criticizing you for what you have to do - everyone has to handle things in their own way. I just find it never helps to escalate things like this. In the situation I have too, this would likely just start more fights if I was deliberately doing things to provoke people.

Absolutely. The turning into Darth Vader made me laugh. because it is a bit like that - it's an insidious thing, and you don't realize it's influencing you until you find yourself behaving the same way.
I recently realized, mid-rant, to another relative that I was doing exactly what they do, and talking about nothing but badmouthing them behind their backs. Not good enough.
I think maybe you just have to catch yourself doing this, acknowledge that their bad attitude is starting to influence you, and deliberately opt for a better solution, a more creative approach than just being a hostile little s**thead like them.
One thing I'm actively trying not to do is focus on them all the time. I just repeat their crappy behaviour in my mind and cement it into my own thinking. So, I'm trying to focus on other things, and just dismiss them and their behaviour completely as totally irrelevant. A pointless noise that doesn't matter to me at all, and I don't have to care about.

My ex-roommate had a wife like that. Even if you agreed with everything she said, she'd still say you were wrong.

Yes, I have known people like this, including my mother, who passed away some years ago. RIP Mom. Now I can too. She was the worst sort of arguer. If she was mad at someone, she wanted everyone else to be mad at that person, and would deliberately get them worked up at the current victim. Although I was the usual victim, everyone else in the family had plenty of turns on the hot seat, too.

I've also encountered arguers at work, and in other places. I just tried to ignore them, so that most of the time, I was able to avoid being the target, but I still didn't like hearing them go after other people. It reminded me too much of my home life with my mother.

And yes, it is kinda contagious. My mother got us all arguing at each other too much of the time. Once she passed away, I gradually was able to phase out of that behavior, because she was no longer stimulating it, and because constant arguing is really not a natural part of my nature.

Sure everyone can and will argue occasionally, but most people are not constant arguers by nature, which is good, as it's horrible to have to live in such an environment.

The best thing to do is to avoid these people when possible, and try to ignore them when you can't avoid them.

Hope you are out of that unhealthy situation soon!