Is there a difference between sealioning and just asking for verification of a bold claim? On a forum such as Lemmy, where people are encouraged to have unsolicited debate in the comments, are we by nature immune from the worst aspects of sealioning?
There is. Sealioning is when you know damn well your position is wrong or otherwise odious, but rather than confront that point (or come right out and say it) you instead pester the other party incessantly to support every single little claim they make with the usually unspoken implication that everyone should think those claims are false.
The difference is that individuals engaging in Sealioning are not doing so in good faith, and the acid test comes about pretty quickly they they don’t address or digest any of the points you’ve supported with evidence/sources and instead move the goalposts immediately and pivot to quibbling about something else and demanding a source for that, instead.
Another Sealioning trick is to fixate on something you said or take it out of context, build a straw man of your argument, and demand evidence/sources for the argument you did not technically make – ideally, a straw man argument that is deliberately unsupportable, or is attacking a matter of your opinion and not a fact but treating it as if it should be supported by citations and evidence. E.g., I don’t like Metallica because I think Lars Ulrich is a douchebag. Sealion: “Excuse me, but can you provide a source attesting to Lars Ulruch personally being a douchebag to you?” No, I just don’t like him because he rubs me the wrong way plus the whole Napster thing back in the day. “Well, since you have not addressed my polite request for a source attesting to Lars Ulrich personally being a douche to you, [ignoring the supportable claim about the Napster thing] your opinion about not like Metallica is obviously laughably absurd [and therefore you are deserving of the ridicule and inserts I am about to heap on you, or will direct others to make at you].” Etc.
The difference is intention. The intention of the sea lion is not to convince you that your claim is wrong or immoral; it’s to shut you up, by draining your desire to make the claim, since every time that you do it, a sea lion pops up to annoy the shit out of you.
That’s a problem because nobody knows the others’ intentions - at most we lie that we know. We can at most guess it - but to guess it accurately, without assuming/making shit up, you need to expend even more “mental energy” engaging the user, or looking for further info (e.g. checking their profile).
On a forum such as Lemmy, where people are encouraged to have unsolicited debate in the comments, are we by nature immune from the worst aspects of sealioning?
No. I’ve seen sea lions in oldschool forums and in Reddit, even if in both you’re encouraged to debate in the comments; so Lemmy is not immune by nature against that.
They’re just “dressed” in a different way; in Reddit for example your typical sea lion says “I don’t understand, [insert question making a straw man of your proposition]? I’m so confused…” instead of asking you to back up your claim.
A big component of sealioning, as I think you’ve pointed out, is one party pretending to not understand the intent or argument behind your reasoning and rephrasing it in a way to make it sound ridiculous, but in the form of a question. The goal is to counter someone’s argument by hoping that they don’t have the argumentative or expressive capacity to succinctly clarify themselves or identify that you’re asking questions in bad faith.
A big component of sealioning, as I think you’ve pointed out, is one party pretending to not understand the intent or argument behind your reasoning and rephrasing it in a way to make it sound ridiculous, but in the form of a question.
Yup. That’s called a strawman. Strawmen are really common when sealioning, as they increase the effort necessary for a meaningful reply - because first you’ll need to dismantle the strawman, then counter-argument.
It isn’t a key component though. You can achieve the same effect through a red herring, tu/ille quoque (aka what-about-ism), or even a false dichotomy.
I like this explanation.
If every time you make a claim, someone pops up and asks you for a source and you can’t provide it, you should stop.
The statement was “I could do without sea lions”. That’s a statement of opinion, not a bold claim.
Is there a difference between sealioning and just asking for verification of a bold claim?
Depends if the person wants to answer or avoid the question. If they want to avoid it, you’re sea lioning.
To expand on what others have said:
If you say “Trump praised president Xi for being a ruler for life” and someone asks for a source. That’s fair because it’s a specific claim you can and should get a source for.
If youre saying “Trump is a right wing grifter” an someone asks for a source, they are sealioning, because its something that’s readily apparent to most people but would be more difficult to provide a source for and even if you did provide examples of him grifitng, the nature of a grift being a lie means it’s difficult to 100% conclusively prove, even if its obvious to everyone, it let’s the sealioner have plausible deniability to assume it’s nit a grift.
That’s when you start your next comment with “On this article I will provide logical proof that…” Then proceed to write a several thousand words treatise about the topic that slowly transitions into Shrek smut fanfiction, then try to see how far into the text they notice. People forget that a source is just a fancy way of saying “someone else said once that”. Not all sources are valid or authoritative. If I am making a subjective claim, I don’t need any fucking source, I am the source bitch.
This strip has always rubbed me the wrong way. If you make a statement in a public forum, don’t be surprised when the public responds. They are not entitled to your attention, but you’re not entitled to their silence. I will not be providing any sources to back up my position, but I’m sure your requests for them will be very witty.
If you make a statement in a public forum, don’t be surprised when the public responds
Sure. That’s not what sealioning is, though. As the comic illustrates, sealioning is bad faith weaponizing of false politeness and feigned high mindedness, not honest inquiry.
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Did anyone else read the sea lion’s voice in a British accent?
Yes, but I read all of their voices in a British accent because I’m British
stop that please
I read it in the voice of Ben Shapiro. Like nails on a chalkboard lol
I’m SO glad that I don’t know what that weasel sounds like.
He soundsexactly how you think he does.
I’m simultaneously envious of and happy for you that you don’t 😄
I read it as Sexual Harassment Panda for some reason.
Ambien Walrus for me.
Nope. Australian.
Other related argument techniques used on the internet (and elsewhere) often commingled with Sealioning:
Butwhataboutism is a pejorative for the strategy of responding to an accusation with a counter-accusation instead of a defense of the original accusation.
Also, ignoring the rebuttal and constantly shifting the attack to a tangentially related part of the discussion forcing the opponent to defend and rebut each new point, generally exhausting them and causing frustration and irritation.
JAQing off is a way of attempting to make wild accusations acceptable (and hopefully not legally actionable) by framing them as questions rather than statements.
Moving the Goalposts in which evidence presented in response to a specific claim is dismissed and some other (often greater) evidence is demanded. Closely related to butwhataboutism.
Appeal to Hypocrisy (tu quoque) basically tries to invalidate your opponent’s argument by using a “your side did it too, worse” and shift the argument to them defending themselves.
And don’t forget the good old ad hominem, where instead of addressing any points, it attacks the one who made it in an attempt to intimidate the one making the point and applying peer pressure on others reading it to keep them away from that position.
Had someone use that on me earlier today lol. They aren’t particularly effective on Lemmy, I’ve noticed. On Reddit, it depended on if they are for or against the popular circle jerk.
Also on the list is the Argument from fallacy : just because I’m an idiot who presented my stance poorly doesn’t mean I’m wrong, it just means I failed to prove I’m right
Or stated differently: A lack of proof is not a disproof. It’s not even evidence.
Yep. That happens at the end when they get pissed they cannot “win”. Usually those engaged in the above tactics are well versed in exhausting their opponents rather than making it personal, though it does happen.
Important detail, regarding argumentum ad hominem (AAH): a lot of people incorrectly conflate the fallacy with insults, even if both things are independent. For example, let’s say that someone said “the Moon is made of green cheese”. Here are four possible answers:
Replies With insult Without insult With AAH You’re a bloody muppet, thus the Moon is made of rocks and dust. You’re no astronomer, thus the Moon is made of rocks and dust. Without AAH Yeah, because there’s totally cheese orbiting Earth for a bazillion years, right? Bloody muppet. Cheese wouldn’t be orbiting Earth for so long without spoiling. This conflation between ad hominem and insults interacts really funny with sealioning. Sometimes you get the sea lion claiming that you’re using AAH because you lost patience with its stupidity, but they’re also prone to use non-insulting AAH.
The insults never add anything useful to arguments and still appeal to the same basic things as insults alone, even if they are accompanied by logically sound arguments. And while they don’t logically weaken a position, they can emotionally weaken it for those who recognize frustration reactions as a sign of weakness.
Rage and anger might feel powerful, but they actually betray a sense of a lack of control. Trolls take advantage of this because it’s a sign they are getting to you. Plus it’s rare that people respond to insults by agreeing with the one who insulted them and the times when they do usually involve an appeal to authority (where the insulter has authority to back up their position and challenging them can have consequences).
If you’re measuring argument “strength” logically, the first paragraph is false; and if you’re doing it rhetorically, it’s misleading.
On logical grounds, insults neither add nor subtract appeal to the argument. That can be seen in the example: at the core, the argument in the bottom left could be rephrased to remove the insult, and it would still convey the same reasoning. Emotional factors shouldn’t be considered on first place..
And, on rhetorical grounds, insults can weaken or strengthen a position depending on the claim, context, and audience. (A good example of that would be the old “fuck off Nazi”.)
for those who recognize frustration reactions as a sign of weakness. [plus the second paragraph]
This is an audience matter, so it applies to the rhetorical strength of the argument, not the logical one: I don’t argument for the sake of assumers, and claims to recognise frustration out of how others convey an argument is assumer tier irrationality. As such, even if insults would weaken the argument for them, I don’t care.
In fact, they’re perhaps the major reason why I personally would recur to insults - to discourage their participation, since assumers are as much of a burden as sea lions (for roughly the same reasons).
If, however, you do argument for the benefit of this sort of trashy individual, be aware that even the assumers might react positively towards insults against a third party. Some will make shit up that you’re “weak” and “frustrated”; some, that you’re “strong” and “brave”. It’ll depend on the general acceptability of the claim that you’re making on first place.
You know I kind of find it funny that the internet has kind of, invented a million different technical debate sounding words for basically just “people that I don’t like”. It doesn’t really matter whether or not the person is actually “sealioning” anymore, or whether or not the word ever had a definition in the first place, because it’s just something that you’re gonna get slapdash labeled with when someone doesn’t like your line of argument, or the fact that you’ve disagreed with them, or whatever. Thought-terminating cliche, oh, there’s another buzzword, and, oh, ironically, there’s another one.
Oops, you’re a troll, you’re a bot, you’re a sealion, you’re strawmanning my position, you’re arguing in bad faith. Signals get crossed over the written medium, anyone will inevitably think someone else is arguing in bad faith when they’re not. There’s better insurance, better strategies against that, then just kind of labeling it and then moving on.
I think the biggest problem is that labeling the behavior doesn’t really tell you what your response should be. If someone is arguing against you in bad faith, you sort of have the options of, arguing back against them in equal measure, equally bad faith, which I would say is the trap most people fall into. You also have the option of arguing against them as though you don’t recognize them as being in bad faith, while being as courteous and nice as possible, which can go some amount of the way to clarifying that you’re not arguing in bad faith if you’ve been mistaken. Or you can just not respond, which is probably a good idea. Don’t feed the troll, don’t reward them with attention.
But also, to some degree, someone else arguing in bad faith shouldn’t really matter. What should matter, I would think, is whether or not they’re arguing correctly. If they’re doing so incorrectly, then they’re not going to be giving you anything interesting to work off of, and then you should probably just ignore them. That’s my advice. It’s like, they’re just a more advanced form of spam, and the solution to spam is pretty simple. You block it, you ignore it.
The internet has kind of, invented a million different technical debate sounding words for basically just “people that I don’t like”
No, a lot of terms for people arguing in bad faith have originated on the internet because there’s a lot of different bad faith arguments on the internet.
Confusing sealioning and other bad faith arguing with “people that I don’t like” is a classic and common example of the bad faith trope called a strawman.
It doesn’t really matter whether or not the person is actually “sealioning”
It absolutely does. You can’t have a rational discussion with someone arguing in bad faith. Someone who’s wrong or seemingly wrong but arguing in good faith might learn something or cause you to learn something, whereas someone arguing in bad faith is only interested in “winning” and completely closed off to even the most valid counterpoints.
it’s just something that you’re gonna get slapdash labeled with when someone doesn’t like your line of argument or the fact that you’ve disagreed with them, or whatever.
It really really isn’t. That you keep going on about this misconception implies that you’ve often been correctly accused of arguing in bad faith and are trying to fend that off by convincing others that there’s no such thing as bad faith, only subjective dislike. Which is objectively wrong.
Thought-terminating cliche, oh, there’s another buzzword, and, oh, ironically, there’s another one.
The real irony is that you’re trying to terminate the thought that bad faith arguing exists via a bad faith use of a thought-terminating cliché.
anyone will inevitably think someone else is arguing in bad faith when they’re not
Again objectively false and saying a lot more about how YOU argue on the internet than internet discussion in general.
labeling the behavior doesn’t really tell you what your response should be
While that’s technically true, it’s much easier to know how to deal with something when you know WHAT you’re dealing with, whether you say it out loud or not.
someone else arguing in bad faith shouldn’t really matter.
That’s just ridiculously false. Couldn’t be further from the truth.
What should matter, I would think, is whether or not they’re arguing correctly
…arguing in bad faith IS by definition a way of arguing incorrectly.
solution [to bad faith arguing] is pretty simple. You block it, you ignore it.
Sure, but simple doesn’t always mean easy. Especially when you have poor impulse control and were brought up to consider it incredibly rude and disrespectful to not answer when someone’s trying to explain you something, whether they’re right or wrong.
See so my kneejerk response to this on seeing it, is, oh, someone’s going, literally line by line of my comment, and, line by line, refuting what I say. That’s what I would classically kind of think of as, oh, this is a bad faith argument, especially because you extrapolate from my post and say, oh, you must’ve been accused of arguing in bad faith constantly, and are trying to convince everyone that bad faith arguments are actually epic and cool! This is not the case, that’s not what I’m really arguing. Despite these somewhat clear signals, in my mind, I’m going to respond, because I’m a hypocrite, of course.
I’m not disputing the actual definitions of sealioning or strawmanning, or that these can be potentially useful terms, what I’m doing is I’m saying that people should put more thought into what it is other people are actually doing with their argument, and what it is that they want out of their engagement with other people, rather than just labeling someone else as something, and then going about their day.
That doesn’t really help anyone, it’s just a kind of self-satisfying thing to do. Anyone reading the comment has to trust that the person doing the labeling is doing it correctly, and to responsibly confirm that, they’re going to have to have read the preceding comment and made their own mind up about it. So it’s not helpful to just label something as “misinformation”, and then move on as though you’ve provided some sort of divinely ordained moral service to everyone passing by. I’ve encountered that sort of mentality before, that debates aren’t really done out of like, an intellectual curiosity, or to kind of, talk through your own viewpoints while listening to someone else and they’re input, they’re done for some third party audience. Which I think is, you know, a less helpful way of viewing debates, viewing arguments. Less helpful for a third party, but also less helpful for yourself. If you’re doing it correctly, it shouldn’t matter much whether or not your opposition is arguing with you in bad faith, because you, and everyone else, should still be able to get something out of it.
I’d also say, a bulk of my point was in the latter half of my comment, the part that you didn’t respond to line by line. My point is that, realistically, bad faith arguments can come from anywhere, even from people who insist and fully believe that they’re not arguing in bad faith, i.e. people who are actually arguing in good faith and just doing so really poorly because they’re dumb. This being the case, that the signals are kind of indistinguishable, and it also being the case that bad faith arguments are kind of, doomed to happen, my advice is that people should either ignore them completely, and not let them kind of, occupy as much free rent as they do, in their minds, or they should work to try and get something out of them despite their bad faith. That was the point I intended to make. Arguing in such a manner, is more beneficial to an observing third party, it can potentially solve the problem of separating signals between bad faith arguers, and poor arguers, and it can help you figure out what your real opinion is on something, and make you better at debate.
Edit: To clarify, what I’m arguing against in my post is people who just summarize someone’s argument as “oh, here’s a list of all the logical fallacies you’ve performed”, and then they haven’t done any of the work to say why that’s important, or how those fallacies affected something. I don’t think that’s a helpful function, to anyone, and it leads to a bunch of people who don’t know what any specific fallacy is, other than that it’s something that they can just kind of slap onto arguments they hate.
Strawman is a pretty common fallacy that I’ve noticed this happen to. I’d also like to comment that, you know, sure, am I creating a strawman by arguing against that type of behavior? I don’t fuckin know. I was under the impression that a strawman was when you were arguing against someone, and then you basically put words in their mouth and extrapolate positions in their argument that they never really took. When I posted that comment, I wasn’t arguing against any specific person, I was just commenting about a general thing I’ve experienced. I wasn’t putting words in anyone’s mouth, because I wasn’t responding to anyone.
We’re all on the internet, you can look up the actual definition for “strawman” like I just did.
To paraphrase: strawmanning an argument is not so concretely about “putting words in anyone’s mouth”.
It is the process of debating a newly-created stance/position/idea that is easily disproven and visibly flawed when this new position may or may not be related to anything in the pre-existing debate. You don’t have to be ‘responding to anyone’; in fact, it fits more if you are not arguing something that anyone in the debate has referenced before.
When someone incorrectly labels you as sealioning that’s called wondermarking. So you can smugly ignore the other person, they are just wondermarking.
“cuntiness”
No thanks, I already ate
There’s always room for pussy!
You’re totally off target there. The problem is that we’re mentally unfit to deal with this much info on a daily basis, and we’re social competitors by nature. We default to scoring points on each other. This is what we are, and we’re only noticing it because now the whole world can hear the whole world, all the time.
Reasoned debate isn’t even done perfectly by those actively in forensics/debate clubs. It’s a learned skill that only shows its true value among other adepts. At the same time, knowing who was funnier or more creatively insulting is a universally admired lowest common denominator.
The utopian promise of the internet has turned to ash in the mouths of its greatest proponents as the glaring light of the collected world has laid bare the indelible stamp of our lowly origins. We need smaller spaces, not larger, to shine more softly among friends who are not so exhausted. That’s why I’m here instead of Reddit.
For the sake of form I’d like to have sourced a few of my claims, but time presses. I hope that my somewhat more gloomy views are not too bothersome.
That is a kind of cynical worldview, i will admit. I think with the amount of people responding to my post that kind of, haven’t really gotten what I’m trying to get across, I think I’ve failed with making my point, perhaps.
To put it better, I think it realistically shouldn’t matter. People looking to score points, people looking for easy targets for bad faith pesterings and attacks. The mentality and approach I’ve taken, which I would espouse as advice to others, is that, despite the kind of, stupidity of the internet, if you are going to respond, you should attempt to get something out of it. Even just to be conscious of what you’re getting out of it, would be a step up, too many people take easy owns because they want to reaffirm their own ego, and aren’t even conscious that’s what they’re looking to do. It would even be better, I would think, if people were conscious of that, even if they still did it in the end. I mean that’s probably what we’re all doing to some extent.
In any case, I think, actually trying to present an external argument, right, it’s harder, it’s not as rewarding, most people aren’t going to do it. But I think passersby will still appreciate it when it’s done, I think it’s objectively more useful, than an easier to parse, easy own, and I think potentially, if done correctly, it can more legitimately distinguish between bad faith arguers and people who are just arguing poorly, which can hopefully make people less cynical and more satisfied with their existence online. It’s a sisyphean task, sure, but sisyphus is also jacked, and we all needed the exercise anyways.
This is not really to counteract any of what you’re saying, though, I think we’re kind of, making points on two different levels. You’re arguing a more kind of, societal reality point, which I would totally agree with, I’m arguing an individual goal kind of point, like an actionable advice kind of thing. Hopefully, anyways.
All received as intended, I think. I must have woken up on a poetic side of the bed this morning, I’m glad I didn’t come off too pompous for a serious reply. I don’t sense that we disagree in any way worth quibbling over.
Doing things with intentionality these days is something we get too rarely even from artists, and that’s their entire job. The unexamined life will always have its proponents, eh?
That’s a lot of words to say the internet is full of useless bad faith arguments that are meaningless. (This is said in jest. I completely agree with your position)
I would argue with you but I need a snappy term to call out someone who makes a long post so that I can win this argument.
Friend, are you familiar per chance with ancient Greece? Humans have been labeling argumentative behavior since the dawn of language. All those things have Greek or Latin terms. Debate has been considered an art form and seriously studied for millennia. There’s no right way of answering a bad faith argument because it is contextual and made more difficult by the toneless nature of the written word. But in some contexts, even on the internet, you don’t have the option of ignoring it. Sometimes it is your job or your responsibility to answer to it, then you have to be creative and artful, depending on the circumstances and what your goal is.
Typical. Check out this echidna you guys.
I think for many it’s knowing when they should block them and not waste their time. having the term and behaviour pointed out helps with that.
More about internet terms and definitions to help catch it when it happens: https://www.dictionary.com/e/online-harassment-disinformation-terms/
And while there are discussions where someone might use these terms to dismiss someone else, Best to move on from that as well.
yup, pretty much
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There’s a joke that goes
I am Firm; You are Obstinate; He is a Pig-headed Fool.
By analogy,
I’m challenging offensive assumptions; you’re asking stupid questions; he’s sealioning.
Don’t pretend like it’s impossible to tell the actual difference between those things. It’s not all subjective. Words have meaning and people are capable of perceiving the motivations of others accurately.
tell the actual difference between those things. It’s not all subjective.
Can you provide a source for that?
No, not this one.(Yes, I’m pulling your leg.)
Lmao
There’s two or three people I’ve interacted with here fairly regularly that perfectly fit this description.
Yup, deleting those losers who literally follow you for days arguing over the stupidest shit ever is very liberating. There’s an air born squid I’ve blocked that’s made this place far more tolerable LoL.
I think by this point everyone on the Fediverse has argued with them and felt the same exasperation.
I usually don’t block them. It’s better to see what they’re saying and be able to warn others about them. Also, I report their nonsense propaganda as misinformation as I see it- which is seemingly most of what they say.
Doing my part to keep lemmy from falling into a far-left biased hellhole.
It’s a clever method of trolling. But if you come prepared and/or are willing to put some effort in, you actually can wreck them with evidence and sound arguments that shuts them completely up.
This is very satisfying.
This is why we need seal clubbing
I don’t know. They stay out too late, get way too drunk and make a terrible racket when they get home.
Can you provide evidence of one time this has ever happened in your area?
I constantly see ads for hot tight seals in my area.
Pardon me, I couldn’t help but overhear…
Would you mind showing me evidence of any negative thing any sea lion has ever done to you?
I’m just curious if you have any sources to back up your opinion that seal lions need clubbing.
Fair enough, could you club me instead?
IM GONNA CLUB THIS SEAL TO MAKE A BETTER DEAL
Care to provide any evidence to support this claim? I would like to have a civil discussion with you about this. /s
Just an anecdotal account. I was expressing my own experiences and how they make me feel, for which it would be challenging and largely unnecessary to provide evidence to a random dumbass on the internet, yes?
/not s, an example
If your feelings are irrational, it’s incumbent on you as a rational person to examine them and separate emotion from fact. Since you have no facts to back up your feelings, clearly the feelings are irrational and should not be used to inform your actions or viewpoints, correct?
Not if I’m recounting a personal experience, no. Humans are not purely rational creatures, otherwise laissez faire capitalism would solve all the world’s problems.
If I wished to be purely rational, then perhaps. But personally I do not think all feelings are worth disregarding.
Would you mind providing evidence of a scenario in which it’s good to be irrational? Because it sounds like you have some level of distaste for being rational, but I’m not seeing any source to back that up.
No, that’s a frankly absurd request. What is or is not “good” is not something sourceable, it’s an entirely subjective question. What makes you think everything has some definitive source?
Excuse you, I’m being polite here and you’re calling me absurd. Can’t a person have a civil conversation without devolving into name-calling? And why haven’t you given a source? Are you unable to back up your claims, or are you unwilling to engage in rational dialogue?
Would you mind providing evidence of a scenario in which it’s good to be irrational?
I think I found the seal club, guys.
Asking someone to provide evidence of a scenario in which something is irrational is an irrational thing to ask. I’ll state why with a kind of example. So, say you have the choice between two boxes of corn flakes. You look between the two, and you decide to pick one. You, you specifically, decide to pick one. Perhaps, the red one, over the blue one, I can’t state this for you. Make up a reason why you chose that box. Now, this reason, which you have chosen, would it necessarily be a rational reason, for you to have chosen the box you did?
Presumably, yes, unless you’re going to argue against yourself, and say that, in this instance, it’s actually good to be irrational. In this instance, then, you’ve made a rational decision, you had a reason to believe the thing that you did. Now, taking this example, and what I’ve formerly said, about you not being irrational, in mind, can you think of any given scenario in which you’ve ever made an irrational decision? Perhaps you can, even, and it was bad, but also, presumably, you thought it was a rational decision at the time. It was probably (here is maybe where it gets iffy) only in hindsight, that you thought your previous belief was irrational.
Taking this into account, and extrapolating off of that experience, we can intuit that they probably didn’t mean what you meant when you (not you, the other guy, but also you right now I suppose) said the word “irrational”, they don’t share your definition of it. Because, kind of, based on these examples I’ve given, there would never be a circumstance in which it would make sense, i.e., “be rational”, for someone to make an irrational decision. This is a straight paradox, if we take that definition to be what they meant.
Then, considering this, right, we can assume they probably meant something else, other than what you have assumed. I will not claim to know what they meant.
Blam, sea lion that, motherfucker. You probably can if you tried really hard, but blam. Sea lion it. (this could be a pretty good example of sea-lioning, too, I gave you some pretty low-stakes, specific stuff to contest, there, that isn’t really part of the main argument, i.e. it’s the definition of a sealion).
Nah, I don’t feel like it. But if I were to do so, I’d probably say something like “this is laughably absurd, come back when you know how to debate” so as to avoid letting you steer the conversation.
Perfect response!
“I think eggplant tastes horrible”
“Got a source to back that up?”
Yep, sounds about like some motherfuckers around here.
Is is weird that when I see a comic, there’s an inverse relationship between the depth and detail of the drawing and my likelihood of reading the strip?
Entirely irrational, I know.
Not irrational. The “detail” in this style of comic is visual clutter that makes it actually significantly harder to see what’s in the panel right away
I wonder if Malki finds the coining of this term to be his greatest accomplishment. I know I would.
Does anyone else feel this (and, subsequently, the term itself) is mildly racist? Or at least defensive of racist/bigoted statements? Like, if someone said “I could do without [insert race here],” is it unreasonable to hold them accountable? I get this is intended to be about people not letting go of minor nitpicks, but the setup is pretty poor, imo.
Would you mind providing some evidence to back up your claims?
#I am trying to eat breakfast
It depends on the context as always.
Sealioning as genuine trolling is shitty and done in bad faith.
But it is completely fair to call out people and ask them for evidence when they make broad statements that are easily verifiable like “black people are more violent than white people” or “Republicans are just as unfriendly towards poor people as Democrats” Etc.
But yeah, here without the context it’s easy to get confused what Sealioning actually is.
Sealioning as genuine trolling is shitty and done in bad faith.
It’s literally part of the definition that it’s in bad faith. Otherwise it isn’t sealioning.
Yeah, this isn’t just someone wanting a reasonable conversation and not getting it. This is the guy on reddit who goes on your profile and follows you around to other subs demanding your reply to a conversation you disengaged with weeks ago.
It’s a broad defense of prejudice, but naturally people are going to choose the prejudices they like as the legitimate ones.
I didn’t know there was a name for that. Basically the obverse of a Gish Gallup.
This comic sucks and openly defends racist rhetoric. Why is it so highly upvoted on Lemmy?
That’s not what this comic is about, although I can kind of see why you thought that.
Instead of just downvoting you, shakes head at fellow lemmings, I’ll explain what sealioning is.
“Sealioning is a type of trolling or harassment that consists of pursuing people with relentless requests for evidence, often tangential or previously addressed, while maintaining a pretense of civility and sincerity, and feigning ignorance of the subject matter.” - Wikipedia
Thank you for that!
The problem is the first frame. The woman says she doesn’t think a whole group shouldn’t exist. You can’t say that and expect a person from that group to ask why she thinks he should be dead… Replace the sealion with any minority group and you’ll see what I’m talking about.
Replace what she said with “trans women are women” or something progressive and I would be 100% on board with the comic. At best the comic is executed badly, at worst it’s an exercise in making anti-racists look bad.
It sounds like what you’re saying is that you only think it’s only bad for someone to sealion if you personally agree with the original sentiment, which is kind of missing the point.
Sealioning is always bad and it is a terrible debating style.
It’s about arguing in good faith, what ever the position and not just shutting down the debate via the text/verbal equivalent of a DDOS attack, simply overloading a target with questions via an insincere pretence of ignorance.
You see, the comic is meant to be ironic. The character says they don’t like sealions, then a sealion (which is a visual metaphor for the concept of sealioning) shows up and is increasingly unbearable for the next five panels despite maintaining a pretense of civility.
At best the comic is executed badly, at worst it’s an exercise in making anti-racists look bad.
How about making sea-lioning look bad. Because, you know, that’s what the comic says, straight-out, in the first panel: It’s anti sea-lion.
Doesn’t matter whether it’s a Jewish or Nazi or black or white or disabled sea-lion, it’s a sea-lion and they suck (solely or in addition to other reasons) because they’re sea-lions. Fuck sea-lions.
