It’s actually a strategy of spreading bullshit and then somehow blaming the person who asks you to back it up.
Yeah. I strongly dislike this whole classification that politely asking someone to back up what they said, or asking basic questions about it, is proof that you’re a terrible person and grounds for immediately quitting the conversation.
It also strikes me as relevant that the same people who say it is a sin, also tend to have no problem with overtly toxic behavior like slinging extreme abuse at anyone who disagrees with them or otherwise being an asshole.
I mean there are some keywords and phrases in the actual textbook definition here like “trolling”, “harrassment”, “incessant bad-faith invitations”. It’s a legitimate thing, but I almost always see it being used illegitimately by someone to attack another who is simply asking them to back up their statements. For example:
A: statement
B: What is your source for this statement?
A: sToP sEaLiOnIng!!!
I think the difference is that sealioning is a pattern of behavior, rather than just occasionally asking for a source. It describes the lack of intent to engage in good faith discussion and instead just is a method of trolling.
Yeah. There are genuine types of sophisticated trolling which involve pretending to be overtly polite while refusing to engage in any respect with the substance of what the other person’s saying, using politeness as a shield to sneak bullshit and bad-faith engagement into the discourse while making the other person look unreasonable if they start getting irritated about it.
In about 100% of cases where I’ve seen someone accused of “sealioning,” though, it is just that they are trying to engage with the conversation and ask for sources, if you have a certain way of approaching disagreement, that’s kryptonite to your argument and so the only response is to start whining about sealioning.
I have definitely come across what your first paragraph describes. Both sealioning and concern trolling definitely happens, on this site and on others.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
Yeah I’m kind of mixed on this concept, because there is nothing wrong with asking for a source and/or asking someone to explain their position. And it seems like a really bad idea to discourage people from asking questions like that.
tenebrisnox@feddit.uk 11 hours ago
Seems to me that’s the point of it: to stop people asking questions in good faith and then persisting on challenging lies and disinformation.
SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
Source?