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.
Coelacanth@feddit.nu 1 day ago
I have definitely come across what your first paragraph describes. Both sealioning and concern trolling definitely happens, on this site and on others.
PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 1 day ago
Yeah. Probably my least favorite brand of it is when someone wanders into the comments to say, “I heard Kamala Harris wandered over to Gaza personally and shot some Palestinians just for fun, and then stopped by Tel Aviv to engage in some light foreplay with Netanyahu before getting back on a plane home stopping only to personally cause capitalism and so that’s why I don’t think I’m going to vote for her, I just don’t feel comfortable personally” and then reacts with “Whoa whoa whoa that’s only what I heard, I don’t really know, I don’t know why you are getting upset with me, I’m not even sure it’s true to be honest, I don’t really pay close attention to politics” when I get irritated at them about their type of engagement.