Spot in. And then there's the concern trolling, "it's important that you provide evidence for your disturbing claims about Lars Ulrich because otherwise you discredit the #metoo movement".

None of that is demonstrated in the comic, it's a bad example.

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.

Hexbear in a nutshell.

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.

To be honest, if someone is saying some bigoted shit that is exactly what I'm doing. I don't expect to change the bigots opinion. My intention is:

1. to point out the obvious flaw to anyone else reading the comment.
2. make it clear that the argument they are making should not be blindly taken as fact, and
3. let them know that when they spout bigoted views they will be challenged on them.

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.

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.

When someone writes a reply asking for a source, did they actually do a short Google-search related to the claim?

no one is responsible for supporting our argument except you.

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.

This point rubs me a little wrong both on the basis that

A) onus of proof falls on the one making the claim

B) if it takes the same amount of time to find the answer as it took for them to ask you, then logically it takes the same amount of time to include a source for anyone that wants further reading as it would to make them look for it

and (most importantly)

C) you can find pretty much anything on the internet if you've got 12 minutes to dedicate to looking through all the clickbait.

The result becomes that I can say any batshit thing I want to and now it's your job to discredit your own stance for me, and if you aren't convinced, you aren't googling hard enough. Instead of just asking and finding out I got it from The Onion, which I would naturally be very against having to say out loud.

If you notice someone acting in bad faith, don’t engage with them

I find that relentless mockery is the best way of countering a sealion. Don't cede the field to them. But also don't get drawn into a bad faith argument. Just insult and make fun of them until they leave.

They may think they’ve “won”, but so what?

The point of internet arguments is not to convince your opponent. That never happens.

The point is to convince the audience, and if you just leave then it looks like the sealion is right.

The thing is a true sealion only "wins" by dragging you into a long offtopic comment chain.

Professional sealions (we don't have them here yet thank god) come armed with a list of "talking points" they use to try to derail genuine conversations and turn them into something else.

They may think they’ve “won”, but so what?

Yeah, I think this is kind of the correct mentality. The currency of trolls is (you)s, you should only feed trolls if they're giving you something actually interesting or novel or amusing in return, rather than getting baited, or giving up and ignoring it altogether. I think it's important for people to reward comments that they like with thought-out responses, rather than the other way around.

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.

Sure, but the comic both starts with a public comment that they still refused to engage with and makes it like, weirdly racist?

It's funny, but diffuses the message a bit.

It does stick with you though, so it has that going for it.

But the reality they're referencing is someone being "in their house" in the sense of being in their tweet replies. Nobody is following you around online, you're carrying them around in your pocket.

The proper response would have been to apologize at the first opportunity.

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

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.

stop that please

I’m SO glad that I don’t know what that weasel sounds like.

Ambien Walrus for me.

Don't let them dictate the convo. You can assert control as well, don't let them lead uncontested.

I don’t know. They stay out too late, get way too drunk and make a terrible racket when they get home.

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.

Beat and kill them while they're young and innocent before they become well informed, intelligent adults that can counter and challenge your firmly held beliefs?

Agreed

IM GONNA CLUB THIS SEAL TO MAKE A BETTER DEAL

Accusing people of “sealioning” is a great way to not have to defend or discuss poorly thought out or sourced claims.

So, the issue is that behaviorwise they're indistinguishable from each other.

Intentionally or unintentionally ignoring signals that a person isn't interested in debate or discussion with you is just as annoying to the person being bothered either way.

It doesn't matter if your intentions are sincere or not when you decide to pester someone into a debate they're not interested in having.

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

Just call it out and redirect back to the topic. It's like training a dog.

you tried to provide an argument and then failed when i replied with evidence as to why you were wrong and then you just responded to as many comments as you could saying im spam after saying "fuck you". you labeled me as MAGA when you have no evidence other than im critical of biden and establishment dems.

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.)

I agree, the comic does a terrible job of demonstrating that however.

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.

"cuntiness"

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.

That's not a very hot take.

Sure, Right here.

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.

I love that he has made his site accessible and even friendly to people who view it in different ways. His RSS feed is pristine, for example.

Can you get her out of my car please?

#I am trying to eat breakfast

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.

In the comic replace the word "Sea lion" with any minority and the response is fully appropriate (Other than being in their house).

Exactly. And some people view every post as some kind of assault on their own views or values. It makes me reluctant to post anything that may be quite radical or a unique take on something, because no matter my intentions, someone takes umbridge at it (and they really shouldn't, we need the wood).

Anyway - I don't mean to step on anyone's sacred cow when I post things, I'm just trying to bring a new slant or point of view most of the time. I'm fine with someone saying "I disagree, and here's why." I'm not fine with people saying, "I disagree because you're a stupid idiot."

Better just leave the annoying people be yeah. You're not changing opinions by reinforcing them

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.