Have you come across the term “sealioning”? First time I saw it in the sidebar of a liberal lemmy instance and now I noticed it was mentioned off hand in a blog post I was reading where another blog post about it was casually linked: http://simplikation.com/why-sealioning-is-bad/
For the longest time I had never heard of this term. It seems to be related to someone persistently asking for evidence. Most of the discussion and truth seeking I have done online has been in Marxist circles and while it is not always high quality I have never once preceived someone or been perceived as a troll for asking for evidence which is why this whole thing is confusing to me.
There is some thing that I would like to acknowledge first. It is completely possible to use a Socratic line of questioning to argue in bad faith and waste someone’s time. If you dig deep enough into someone’s worldview it is likely you will hit a wall of presupposition or common sense for which the person does not have any supporting evidence at hand.
But I have never seen this tactic being deployed systematically. I have never been sealioned. Sometimes I have made claims which I haven’t been able to support with evidence but when that has been pointed out, it has been embarassing but I haven’t felt like some cheap tactic was used to discredit. And this has happened very rarely. If you read the linked comic strip in the linked blog post, it reads very weird. It feels like circular logic but I think its not quite that.
I always thought ‘sealioning’ was the same as ‘JAQing(acronym: just asking questions) off’-- basically, where somebody spams a dozen obviously-bad-faith, obviously-unresearched questions at another to waste their time, typically capped off with “hey I’m just asking questions here” like they’re not deliberately trying to subliminal a bad(usually state dept-supported) line. This “sealioning is just asking for evidence” horseshit sounds like a liberal got sick of people asking them to qualify their
beliefsbullshit, and they’re now trying to make it the last line of defense before their vibes-based worldview.I’ve only seen this accusation used in the extremely liberal sections of Reddit or our friendly lib instances.
It doesn’t really feel like an efficient way to derail a conversation in text: you say something, the person responds asking for a source; either 1) you reply with the source or 2) you don’t and the conversation dies.
Compare that with “Just Asking Questions”, which can quickly frame complex issues in unstated but obvious ways that usually pander to preconceptions or even conspiracy theories. Those need to be directly confronted (or banned) every time and can easily pass as curious cluenessless.
But irl it can be very annoying. Imagine having a conversation where the person asks you to cite the source of every remark like you’re a walking academic article. Dealt with a Trotskyist fake leftist fucko who once even wanted me to cite the Kinsey-scale paper after I offhandedly mentioned it while talking about my bisexual living experiences.
Edit: but libs hate both this and JAQing because they have no actual sources and can’t properly answer those questions without sounding reactionary themselves.
I think it’s pretty telling that the original sea lion comic is just a guy being racist and getting annoyed when the sea lion calls him out on said racism
I put it in the same category as concern trolling, tone policing, etc. All ways of using legitimate issues (interrogating the validity of a position, discussing how words or actions are perceived) as derailment tactics. This can be used by anyone, too – I’ve seen these labels dropped into conversations to avoid answering tough, seemingly good-faith questions.
Overall, these strike me as another version of debatelords dropping the names of logical fallacies as some kind of own: they rarely do much besides derail the conversation into meta shit about what the terms mean. Effectively responding if you think someone is doing this requires more than just calling it out.
this has happened to me with a few things other than sealioning
webcomic reference in normal conversation
the person explains it to you by showing you the webcomic
you can’t tell if it’s got some subtext you’re missing or it’s referencing internecine website violence
I love referencing the “you criticise society yet you live in it” webcomic though I don’t get the chance to do it often these days.
“CURIOUS!” is a brain worm that has even contaminated normal conversations between me and other online people i know in the flesh so that’s a good example
But we’re they “genuinely” curious? One of my most hated redditisms.
That makes sense even if you don’t know the guy is popping out at various eras in the comic. The sealion thing doesn’t make any sense unless you’ve read fucking Wondermark
Lol yeah that one
It is a battle of one ego.
The “attacker” asks questions in bad faith to a community that they see as an enemy.
The people in the community spend time, maybe wasting it answering their questions. Inane as they might be.
The “attacker” feels like they “owned” the enemy community for responding. it is Trolling, short for “controlling”. It is forcing people to do something. The thing that they are forcing people to do is not that harmful. The best way to counter any “harm” that could be done is by touching grass.
For everyone else watching, this is data to feed the algorithms answers to questions that community deems appropriate.
Many people do this from the perspective of team sports of their side attacking the other side. It comes from a place of wanting victory, not correctness. Victories in online spaces is of little material consequence. People with their dialectical relationship with capitalism will see the truth in time.
The problem I have is that liberals often have views that they assume to be correct because of the mythology surrounding them but are backed by weak or non-existent evidence.
Like check out this thread I got into a while back: https://lemmy.ml/comment/6359409
It’s about Russia’s invasion being branded as a quest for territory. Apart from NYT-brained white liberals no one in the world believes this. Russia have never claimed to conquer Ukraine for territory. Opposing militaries and intelligence don’t have evidence for this. I asked for proof there and you can see how “exhausted” they are in the response.
My position has always been critical support of Russia because it undermines US imperialism, but I don’t know all of the details and know that there are falsehoods told by Russia, Ukraine, and the US state department. Regardless of Putins imperialist intent or not, this shifts trading relationships and wastes the US’s time and resources so that China can do more trade policies. I think one must be humble enough to say that they don’t know something like Putin’s very small ambitions to take over Ukriane, just say you don’t know. If Putin wanted to take over Ukraine or not he’d still deny it for diplomatic and millitary reasons. If Putin wanted to take over Ukraine or not the US millitary would say he wanted to.
It’s been very expensive and long for them to do this operation, and it doesn’t seem that they’ll be able to do this full take over for other neighboring countries. Also their ambition of the right wing Duganists is to restore tsarist russia territories so, the EU doesn’t need to worry. At worst small countries like Georgia and Azerbaijan that are already trading with Russia would get a stupidly expensive invasion to get (maybe) better prices in buying goods from a war torn country. However, that sounds sillier than Australia building up a millitary to protect their trade routes with China from China.
The undisputable facts of the fascist neonazis in Ukraine getting killed by russia is nothing to snuff at even if not all of the units are so explicitally fascist.
That’s all well and good but it’s tangent to the main point. Which is that liberals make important assumptions without any real world evidence to back them up often. Is prodding this sealioning? The colonial ambition talking point is used to distract from the decades of NATO shenanigans in Ukraine including the repression and killing of ethic Russians in Ukraine. Liberals accept it uncritically wholesale because it feeds into the Putin madman trope too.
If it makes you feel better, I have never understood the sealioning thing. I’ve read the comic and still don’t get it.
I feel like I’ve been sealioned in the federated instances. It’s why I only browse by local/subscribed now, and if I do venture out and talk politics, I cut myself off if the liberalism/reaction is terminal.
I met it in particular with Ukraine. I would explain my view and be met with a question like, ‘but don’t you agree that Putin is a bad man?’ as if the answer or question were relevant. Then I’d clarify my point and get asked another asinine question, perhaps the same question re-phrased in a hundred different ways.
It’s the everyday-liberal’s filibuster.
I think sealioning can be coupled with moving the goal posts, as the sealion will refuse to understand your point and ask a question that is transparently intended to make you agree with them and admit that you were wrong.
You see a similar thing with Palestine. You can give whatever analysis you like and your interlocutor will repeatedly spam variations of ‘Do you condemn Hamas?’ It could be a mental block for them. Like they’ve been trained not to understand that Israel is a genocidal settler colonial apartheid state unless you agree that it’s justified in some way (only then can you try to find common ground that genocide might be bad).
Idk. When it’s happened, I’ve maybe given people too much credit. Maybe they really just don’t understand, can’t comprehend what I’m saying. I guess it’s like this: liberalism stands for unprincipled compromise and liberals naturally sealion until every critic has given up or abandoned their own principles, too.
usually people ask for evidence and then dont fuckin read it or they just argue about the quality of the source, which i dont think is the same thing as sealioning
Interesting. This is what media bias fact check has to say about your source.
Truth does not fear investigation
death to america
I’ve come across the word, but l have never been subjected to it
