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.

To add one more aspect: When someone writes a reply asking for a source, did they actually do a short Google-search related to the claim? It basically takes the same time to just look at the summary of the search results as asking for a source. So I assume if someone asks for verification for an easily searchable fact, then they are acting in bad faith.

Also one more thing: If you notice someone acting in bad faith, don't engage with them. Downvote them, move on. This is especially true for the next few months until the US elections are over. You will notice it a day after the elections that the quality of discussions will increase because the bad faith actors will take a vacation. What happened on Reddit in 2016 is happening here right now.

When I’m not sure, I just give them the benefit of the doubt. For example, there’s a good chance that the person replying to me speaks English well, but it’s not their first language. Also, their cultural norms might be very different from my own. It could be a simple misunderstanding, too. Overreacting would just make things worse.

When it’s obvious that the person replying is just being a pedantic nuisance, though, I merely stop responding. They may think they’ve “won”, but so what? I can go to bed knowing I don’t waste my time sealioning.

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.

Yeah there's a difference. @dualsportdork described it well.

But no we're not 100% immune from it. I've seen a few people try to do it.

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.

The statement was "I could do without sea lions". That's a statement of opinion, not a bold claim.

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.

To add what other people have said: the sealion in the comic is following them around and being obnoxious. It even follows them to their bedroom.

One aspect of sealioning is continually trying to "debate" someone for something they once said, even if they're currently engaged in a completely unrelated conversation.

Yes, but I read all of their voices in a British accent because I'm British

I read it in the voice of Ben Shapiro. Like nails on a chalkboard lol

I would to have a civil conversation about your statement.

I read it as Sexual Harassment Panda for some reason.

Nope. Australian.

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.

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.

This is why we need seal clubbing

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.

Care to provide any evidence to support this claim? I would like to have a civil discussion with you about this. /s

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.

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.

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)

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.

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.

My hot take is that arguing on the internet is just never worth it. As soon as a comment turns into an argument I stop responding.

yup, pretty much

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.

Found the sea lion.

Yep, sounds about like some motherfuckers around here.

Got a source to back that up?

I asked for Malki's authorization to put a translated version in my Spanish-language website and he was very quick to allow it. He seems to be a nice guy.

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

That man has the patience of an angel.

I remember this from several years ago. Not one Youtube commenter took her side

Further examples here.

[Warning: contains real sea lions doing funny stuff.]

Would you mind providing some evidence to back up your claims?

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.

Racist against whom exactly?

It's a broad defense of prejudice, but naturally people are going to choose the prejudices they like as the legitimate ones.

I think an important part is that the sea lion is pretending to be civil while still being extremely annoying. It's adjacent to the whole thing of saying vile things with civil language (then getting upset when people respond uncivilly).

And? Discrimating against someone for their race, gender, or sexuality is bad. Discriminating against someone for being a jerk is fine.

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.

Yep, if it were different it would mean something else

I do see where you were coming from, but it's hard not to sum up your comment as "if this were racist, it'd be racist".

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