Yeah, I can’t help but feel that the message of this comic would be turned on it’s head if you’d replace the sea lion with a Jew, black, Palestinian, gay, trans, etc…
Yeah I interpreted the meme as them being sealion-phobic. The sealion was therefore rightfully offended and wanted to debate. However, the sea lion should’ve gone away after the 4th panel and not broke into the guys house.
Source: I am trans and would not break into a mildly annoying persons house harrasing them for a source.
Better just leave the annoying people be yeah. You’re not changing opinions by reinforcing them
Did anyone else read the sea lion’s voice in a British accent?
I read it in the voice of Ben Shapiro. Like nails on a chalkboard lol
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I’m simultaneously envious of and happy for you that you don’t 😄
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.
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.
“cuntiness”
No thanks, I already ate
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.
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.
Sure, but in this comment the sealion is initially acting in good faith towards by what any standard of the world presented in the comic would be a racist.
Are you sure about that? The first actual request of the sealion is ridiculously overbroad and would be extremely difficult and time-consuming to comply with.
At which point the sealion would doubtlessly respond by either nitpicking one example amongst many or moving the goalposts.
Doesn’t seem to me that it was acting in good faith at any point.
Idk bro, you could replace the sealion with that guy who un-racisted all those Klan members and I bet the initial interaction was pretty similar. It gets back on track when the sealion follows him home and all, but I think it would have been a stronger comic if they were talking about other things when the sealion hounds him about a different topic.
Then people who don’t know what sealioning is look up what the fuck it’s about and it doesn’t look the sealion is just practicing active anti-racism.
I’d actually argue the contrary: that it’s initially questionable whether or not the sealion is acting in bad faith rather than immediately obvious mirrors real life and as such better illustrates how a sealion differs from an immediately obvious troll.
It’s clear from the context of the comic that it’s the behavior of such sea mammals that she dislikes rather than anything intrinsic that they don’t choose themselves and can’t change.
The sealion immediately latching onto a misunderstanding of intent and refusing to let go of it is in fact another way in which the comic effectively illustrates sealioning.
…this is beginning to feel uncomfortably meta…
Yeah, someone here isn’t admitting there’s a weird racial element to “I just don’t like the way all of those types act…” when all you need to say is “yeah it’s a little weird” and everyone can move on with things like saying “Yeah, fuck sealions.”
It’s also not a great look to pretend a direct, ongoing discussion in a specific post is the same as someone following you around social media, pretending ignorance of the topic, and endlessly requesting clarification.
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.
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).
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.
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.
Often the troll will just shift slightly and keep making demands regardless of evidence.
Don’t let them dictate the convo. You can assert control as well, don’t let them lead uncontested.
What’s your usual method of parry?
Remember the original discussion and don’t take the bait to deviate. “We are not talking about X, we are talking about Y as originally posted by OP and I will not follow you down your rabbit hole.”
i don’t answer questions (present thread excepted). i insist someone say plainly what it is they are getting at. and if they refuse that’s that. if they persist in asking, i tell them not to be petulant. and if they present an argument, and it’s sound, i usually just let that stand. if it’s unsound, i let them know.
and, of course, one of the best ways is to never take a strong position yourself that can be sealioned.
It’s easier said than done, but it can be done. The key is to unleash your inner troll and embrace the “u mad bro” while being
I recommend engaging once or twice in good faith, then hounding them to make a hard claim you can disprove. If they don’t, start politely asking if there’s any part they’d like to elaborate on while dropping implications they didn’t read or understand what you said, and then asking about their beliefs on the topic.
It happened to me on Lemmy a while ago, I don’t think the guy was actually a troll (I think he just didn’t like what I had to say about the world bank and imf being the reason central and South America have stayed so poor despite incredible natural resources)
The dude got so mad he started going through my old posts and calling me a hypocrite. But he made a mistake, that was a hard claim - there was no contradiction in my beliefs and stance. I slapped him down a few times before realizing my posts from days ago were getting a lot of responses
Once I started recognizing the username and realized what happened, I started getting patronizing… It was oh so satisfying. I kind of wish he’d kept going for longer
I love reverse trolling trolls, all of the fun and none of the guilt
This is why we need seal clubbing
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.
I don’t know. They stay out too late, get way too drunk and make a terrible racket when they get home.
It’s also frustrating because there are people who are sincerely trying to discuss in good faith while having a different opinion, which is camouflage for the sealion trolls.
Of course, people increasingly forget about the former group completely, and react with hostility… It’s understandable, but unfortunate for healthy discussion.
At least in your case, your response is to lay out robust arguments to explain your position, which is productive regardless of whether they’re trolling or sincere. I’ve learned a great deal over the years from strangers on the internet putting a clinic on someone who may or may not have been trolling.
Accusing people of “sealioning” is a great way to not have to defend or discuss poorly thought out or sourced claims.
