How does this differ from robust lines of question in political reporting?
Good faith.
Sealioning
11–20 of 28 posts
Re: Sealioning
#12Here is the origin of the term: http://wondermark.com/c/2014-09-19-1062sea.png
I remember being very confused by the reaction to this when it first appeared. My initial reading was that the first line is meant to be analogical with racism, since the speaker holds an irrational prejudice against a particular biological category. When questioned on it, they refuse to explain or apologise! It took me a while to grasp the alternate reading in which the sea lion is more like a subculture, such as "g…
I've never been a fan of the term sea lioning precisely because of that characteristic of the comic.
People who expect to go through the world declaring strong opinions and then immediately refusing to explain it or engage with counterarguments are pretty annoying too.
Imagine this conversation:
A: "Ruby has better performance than Node.js!"
B: "I hadn't heard that, can you provide some evidence of this claim?"
A: "Shoo, troll! Being asked to provide evidence is harrassment! Stop sea lioning me!"
A bit of a caricature, but I've seen plenty of conversations that follow that basic structure. In that case, person A is the troll, not person B.
Re: Sealioning
#13How does this differ from robust lines of question in political reporting?
If you're asking relevant questions, of a person who is plausibly responsible for or has special knowledge of the situation being questioned, it's not sealioning.
If you are asking questions which have had books written about them, and/or of a person who is clearly not specifically responsible for the situation and has no special knowledge of the situation... and you won't stop, it's sealioning.
If you are asking irrelevant or strawman questions of a person who nevertheless might be responsible for or have special knowledge of the situation, it's badgering, not sealioning.
Re: Sealioning
#14[deleted]
Re: Sealioning
#15Dogpiling, gaslighting, sealioning, just a few of the made up words with a vague enough definition to be used in claiming harassment in any situation.
PS: if you disagree with me you're duckfencing!
Re: Sealioning
#16How does this differ from robust lines of question in political reporting?
Good faith.
Which is often dependent on interpretation, which helps explain the polarization of this discussion. Faced with a given discussion, it's likely that people who are ideologically aligned with the questioner will see it as valid, and those aligned with the one being questioned will see sealioning. I've found it a good thing to keep in mind when I evaluate my own online behavior, but not so useful when evaluating others'.
Re: Sealioning
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
I remember being very confused by the reaction to this when it first appeared. My initial reading was that the first line is meant to be analogical with racism, since the speaker holds an irrational prejudice against a particular biological category. When questioned on it, they refuse to explain or apologise! It took me a while to grasp the alternate reading in which the sea lion is more like a subculture, such as "g…
It's intellectual violence which consumes the time of people of good intent by insisting that they do significant labor to support elements and details of an argument that are generally held to be self evident and true. Things like racism are included - for example "the KKK is a terrible organisation that hurt many people"... "have you got personal experience of this?".."how many KKK attacks have there been in Suffol…
Renaming disagreement, even in bad faith, as "violence" is unnecessarily tendentious and weakens the concept of actual violence. It colors and lessens the effect of the rest of what you said, which is all just fine. I find that a far more bad-faith technique of discussion than sealioning.
Re: Sealioning
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
I remember being very confused by the reaction to this when it first appeared. My initial reading was that the first line is meant to be analogical with racism, since the speaker holds an irrational prejudice against a particular biological category. When questioned on it, they refuse to explain or apologise! It took me a while to grasp the alternate reading in which the sea lion is more like a subculture, such as "g…
It's intellectual violence which consumes the time of people of good intent by insisting that they do significant labor to support elements and details of an argument that are generally held to be self evident and true. Things like racism are included - for example "the KKK is a terrible organisation that hurt many people"... "have you got personal experience of this?".."how many KKK attacks have there been in Suffol…
To call it intellectual violence tends to justify the use of force to oppose it. And it softens the definition of violence by inappropriate analogy. Even in the extreme case you describe, and even assuming that such questions are insincere (which I don't), it's still only rude and annoying behavior, far from violence.
Re: Sealioning
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
I remember being very confused by the reaction to this when it first appeared. My initial reading was that the first line is meant to be analogical with racism, since the speaker holds an irrational prejudice against a particular biological category. When questioned on it, they refuse to explain or apologise! It took me a while to grasp the alternate reading in which the sea lion is more like a subculture, such as "g…
I've never been a fan of the term sea lioning precisely because of that characteristic of the comic. People who expect to go through the world declaring strong opinions and then immediately refusing to explain it or engage with counterarguments are pretty annoying too. Imagine this conversation: A: "Ruby has better performance than Node.js!" B: "I hadn't heard that, can you provide some evidence of this claim?" A: "S…
The original comic is pretty clear that it's the repeated attempts to engage with someone clearly uninterested in debate "Aha! A whole day has passed and you have provided no evidence of the superior performance of Ruby on the other thread." that marks the sealions out. The other side to the comic is that the original throwaway remark sounds a bit hard to justify, until we see the sealions. Anybody who's ever made a throwaway remark about how X is like a cult or Y has obsessive fanboys and got bogged down in replies from people politely insisting actually we're completely normal, now please refute all 27 points about why X and Y are better can relate...
Also its a Godwin-law type internet regularity, not a cast iron behavioural rule. Sometimes making comparisons to Nazis or calling out serial posters of provocative statements is actually appropriate
Re: Sealioning
#20Dogpiling, gaslighting, sealioning, just a few of the made up words with a vague enough definition to be used in claiming harassment in any situation. PS: if you disagree with me you're duckfencing!
Indeed. Just classifying and dismissing arguments based on these memetic argumentation taxonomies has become a debating strategy unto itself.