I am aware of
- Sea-lioning
- Gaslighting
- Gish-Galloping
- Dogpiling
I want to know I theres any others I’m not aware of
Whataboutism
“Russia invaded ukraine! Putin must be held accountable!”
“Yeah well what about Iraq, 2003???”
What techniques do bad faith users use online to overwhelm other users in online discussion and arguments?
Submitted 2 days ago by x4740N@lemm.ee to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
Comments
anachrohack@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
andybytes@programming.dev 12 hours ago
In 2014, the United States imperialist empire with the CIA supported a coup of a democratically elected president. This gave rise to ultra-nationalist elements in the country to come to power. Some might call these people Neo-Nazis. A liberal perspective is ignoring the fact that the United States is an imperialist empire. A liberal perspective is ignoring the fact that the United States is an imperialist empire. That now is pulling back from its soft power and moving more towards, I would say, hard power. We will live in an age of normalizing tactical nukes which are lower yield. We will continue bombing the shit out of poor people while playing both sides. Neoliberalism is a right-wing ideology. It was an attempt to end all wars by putting them on pause. But I would think because you’re alive now and you’re capable of using the internet, you would realize that we live in the era of asymmetrical warfare and proxy wars. The world relies on global trade, but now that the rich have hoarded the wealth so like all wars, All wars are banker wars, but yet there is no war but the class war. In America, we only have a service-based economy. So the only way we can produce income, other than working at a cheeseburger stand, for vapid, useful idiots of empire, is to join the military and resign ourselves to being a part of a machine that murders and commits genocide. There is a song called Love Me Love Me, I’m a liberal. And if you actually listen to the lyrics, you will realize that history is repeating itself. Depending on how young you are, you might be forced into the military sooner or later. I would learn about the opium wars and then think about how China maybe is giving us a dose of our own medicine. I would also look up the Imperial Boomerang. Or also what the military uses “blowback”. It’s up to you if you want to be a snarky liberal or some cultish tanky but at the end of the day we are reaching the singularity. We live in the lowest common denominator and the likes of Edward Bernays or maybe look up Alan Dulles you will soon realize that you live in a world that’s merely but a dream. We are master’s manage perception. We live in North Korea with the mixture of say like Disneyland but without your wallet. With Israel, there will be a pullback optically to make it seem that we’re upset with what they’re doing. But in reality, we are working in the background, handling all the background round processes and even boots on the ground. If you do not have nuclear weapons, you do not have national sovereignty, especially when because of Trump and because of Biden, sleepy, limp dick what was left of the rules-based order is completely gone. The rich will use us as pawns, and you are probably a liberal who is playing the role of useful idiot. You can, if you’d like, go online and look up the left and right paradigm. People outside of the United States, like in Europe, view us as solely a right-wing country. But we’re interesting because we’re in imperialist power. Which makes it glaringly obvious if you have full spectrum understanding that capitalism is not a long-term strategy. The world hates us and fears us because of our brutality. During World War II, the United States financed and supported Hitler. This was an attempt to weaken the Russians. And then after the war, the Catholic Church and the United States government trafficked Nazis all over the world even look up Operation Gladio. But they also sent them to South America and to the United States to work on our rocket program to fight the Russians. Now China and Russia are both capitalist countries and now communism, any little inkling of, is completely eradicated and it seems that capitalism causes a tremendous amount of violence. Now, if you look at the money supply, hyperinflation, we are synthesizing ourselves down to the lowest common denominator. We do not have any money in the system to do anything because we funnel it all to our military, which is somewhat a socialist entity in that people join the military because their poor. But even the military and the veterans are treated like shit after their service… Which is kind of funny to me Because you basically joined a volunteer army and somehow your ignorance somehow makes you not culpable for murdering people in other countries. It blows my mind. I Mean these people are somewhat victims as well as victimizers, but at the root of it, it’s the lack of self-awareness possibly reading comprehension or just even motivation due to a lethargic mind. I have lived on this planet long enough to know we are living in a spectrum of decline and things are not going to get better. I also know when I was younger I had stupid opinions and as I got older those opinions changed. I’m not too interested in the lingo of the internet, but more combating disinformation. Also, I’m not a big fan of China’s president or Russia’s president. And you have to remember they are capitalistic and they probably have imperialist ambitions. They probably would like to be the next hegemon. Anyways, it’s a can of worms and everybody’s askew. When I see bad things happen in this country or Abroad., I’m not like, oh my god, the humanity. I’m more like, oh that makes sense. Why don’t you give this document a gander and enrich yourself to a more mature viewpoint. Cheers www.brookings.edu/…/06_iran_strategy.pdf
SupaTuba@lemm.ee 10 hours ago
What’s the word for dumping a novel of slop like this?
dermanus@lemmy.ca 11 hours ago
New copypasta just dropped everyone!
DeathsEmbrace@lemm.ee 12 hours ago
If it makes you feel any better society is completely fucked in say 50 years and there will be a collapse/catastrophe. You will never have to worry about this ever again.
ICastFist@programming.dev 14 hours ago
That’s the “tu quoque”, aka “you too” argument evasion
andybytes@programming.dev 12 hours ago
Down with the empire! en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viriathus
jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 13 hours ago
Is there a name for the thing where you’ll make an argument with like 3 distinct points supporting it, and the other person will attack only one, and claim the whole thing is in their favor?
Like, “You can’t cast two leveled spells in a turn, and you’re silenced, and you’re out of spell slots, so you can’t cast another fireball”
“No, I have another spell slot from my ring. Fireball time!”
skye@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
cherry picking
Quibblekrust@thelemmy.club 21 hours ago
“Thought-terminating clichés”
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_cliché
Also… I don’t think it has a name, but dubiously claiming any of these examples in an argument. Maybe it’d just be called “deflection”.
I’ve seen so many valid arguments shutdown as whataboutism, sealioning, concern trolling when they were valid arguments. It’s just as much bullshit as actually doing any of those things.
ICastFist@programming.dev 14 hours ago
Check out Rational Wiki’s page on logical fallacies rationalwiki.org/wiki/Logical_fallacy
AnalogNotDigital@lemmy.wtf 1 day ago
I’ll give you a huge one.
Purity tests (when cosplaying as liberals). If a person isn’t super-duper liberal on every single issue then you can’t support them.
There’s tons of this on this very site. People who will tell you they’ll stay home and not vote for someone, if they only support 80% of what they seemingly want. People see this, then emulate said behavior.
Somehow, liberals would rather get 0% of what they want instead of 50% because of the missed 30% that the candidate doesn’t support.
sudoer777@lemmy.ml 12 hours ago
If the 20% they don’t support is the absolute most basic of human rights, then as far as I can tell they support 0% of what I want.
kreskin@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
Well mr anti-purity test, maybe these people you dont like have non-negotaibles – like being against genocide. Things they wont negotiate away which you dont understand it because theres nothing you wouldnt sell out.
WhatsTheHoldup@lemmy.ml 14 hours ago
genocide is not something you negotiate away.
Genocide is not something you stay at home for and hope it goes away on its own.
You don’t get to claim the ally if all you did was nothing.
OP criticized people who stayed home (choosing to hold on to their purity) instead of voting for the candidates least likely to perpetuate futher suffering.
Going “oh no this trolley problem is so terrible I refuse to even look at the lever” is prioritizing your own moral superiority over the people tied to the trolley.
ConstantPain@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Politicians you don’t like can make good policies and politicians you do like can make bad policies. Parties are not football teams for you to take blind sides and politicians are not celebrities to be veneered blindly. They are public servants, nothing more.
It’s a global phenomenon, but Americans are particularly affect by the false dichotomy fallacy of having the two sides of political spectrum represented when, in reality, they just have two flavors of right to choose from. Both are shit in their own way.
People love to turn off their brains and follow the leadership. That’s what makes us easily manipulable. It’s not because someone aligns politically with you that they are working with your best interest in mind.
Sorry for the random rambling.
AnalogNotDigital@lemmy.wtf 19 hours ago
Yeah, and you’d think that even leftists would agree that having the people in charge that want cheaper college, and cheaper medicine/healthcare would be the better option, even if (from their lens) they are a right wing party.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
I agree 100% with the purity test thing, but “liberal” ≠ leftist. That’s not a purity thing, it’s a “words have specific definitions” thing.
I know idiot tankies say this, and I know they are annoying when they constantly use “liberal” as an insult… But it is technically correct that they are two distinct ideologies.
AnalogNotDigital@lemmy.wtf 19 hours ago
Sure. My point stands. A leftist will get 30-50% of what they want with a Democrat in office compared to 0% of what they want.
A toddler can work out it’s better that you get a small portion of what you want, instead of nothing. It’s really that simple.
BrainInABox@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
The 30% is active genocide
AnalogNotDigital@lemmy.wtf 19 hours ago
Dude, you guys don’t give a shit that Myanmar is in a civil war, Sudan is in a civil war, China is ethnically cleansing Uighur Muslims, and that India and Pakistan are in almost-open conflict.
You put the fact that a trump ally in Israel wouldn’t listen to Democrats solely on the shoulders of Biden and Harris while completely not giving a singular fuck about any of those other conflicts.
This is why people like you are the PERFECT definition of slactivists, who are looking for a reason to not get a portion of what you want so you can feel morally superior to others for not participating in democracy.
Get over yourself.
MBech@feddit.dk 1 day ago
The problem is, the other option is 70% genocide. So by not voting for the 30% genocide, you’re enabling the 70% genocide.
Nyonnyan@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Since I am not american I may have missed something; to my knowledge no genocide got stopped or even prevented since trump once again got to power. What is your opinion on this matter?
SpaceCadet@feddit.nl 1 day ago
Oh look we got a live one!
Mods: if you’re going to remove comments, at least have the guts to say you want to maintain your echo chamber instead of hiding behind rule 5, which this comment does not violate.
SpaceCadet@sopuli.xyz 21 hours ago
Hey look, we have a live one!
neidu3@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
Whataboutism
agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works 12 hours ago
Buttery males
Empricorn@feddit.nl 12 hours ago
This makes the males so slippery!
Mac@mander.xyz 1 day ago
Well maybe but lemme tell you about the others!
RabbitBBQ@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
After an event happens, many people convince themselves they saw it coming all along even if they had no idea.
Everyone is an expert on everything… Worse now because of LLMs
Phrasing something as protecting children… The ultimate form of manipulation
BrainInABox@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
The one I see the most is just playing dumb and pretending not to understand basic things
inzen@lemm.ee 1 day ago
That may or may not be a technique.
BrainInABox@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
Sometimes they’re genuinely dumb, but often it’s obvious that they know, and they know you know.
toddestan@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
Depending on what they are doing, it can be a form of sea-lioning.
andybytes@programming.dev 12 hours ago
BrainInABox@lemmy.ml 12 hours ago
Context?
daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
Fallacy accusations.
When someone does not want to argue about your points they will attack the way you used to made them. If you check hard enough you can find fallacies in most online conversations. So if someone wants they could easily accuse anyone of making this or that fallacy. Some of them being also kind of subjective. Was this a valid example or was it a strawman?
They would just change the debate subject and put you on the defensive defending yourself of making fallacies.
I just usually point out this attitude and end the debate when this happens.
whereisk@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
A fallacy matters if it’s central to proving the argument, otherwise it probably doesn’t. Eg Bringing up an anecdote, or a subjective experience as a way of illustrating a point could be said to be fallacious, but is not, if the argument is well supported enough that would stand without it.
I just had an argument where I ended my point with the words “this is a pure could have been:” and added a very likely scenario that may well could have come to pass it some events were different. Obviously it was speculation and not central to the previous argument, but in my estimation likely.
Then other person instead of responding to actual points took the last part and accused me of should’a, would’a, could’a.
Dude, yes! But not the point, also I was the one that pointed it out. The type of person that would explain to a comedian their own joke.
Robust_Mirror@aussie.zone 1 day ago
Man that’s such a strawman, you’re completely misrepresenting why they bring up fallacies.
Irelephant@lemm.ee 15 hours ago
Is there a fallacy fallacy? where people assume that because something has a fallacy its wrong, or they accuse something of having a non-existant fallacy?
BrainInABox@lemmy.ml 12 hours ago
There is indeed
0x0@lemmy.zip 15 hours ago
There are a few phallic fallacies for sure.
lmmarsano@lemmynsfw.com 8 hours ago
Fallacy accusations.
No one needs to waste their time with someone else’s invalid reasoning.
Some of them being also kind of subjective.
Logicians & philosophers would disagree. Fallacies clarify identifying common reasoning errors & save effort overexplaining clearly documented problems.
Was this a valid example or was it a strawman?
Strawman means claiming to refute an argument by instead refuting a misrepresentation of it. Unclear how a question about examples would arise there unless the definition wasn’t understood.
ogmios@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
Here is a great piece someone put together a while ago which goes through many of the techniques bad actors use.
Yermaw@lemm.ee 2 days ago
I remember reading that list years and years ago and thinking how petty it was that so much effort has gone into it.
Now I’m a little bit worried about how far ahead of the game these cunts are.
ogmios@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
Dude. Power seekers have been doing this shit since ancient times, and you’re getting your panties in a twist about people who fight back against them?
DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 17 hours ago
You forget the most common one of all, lying.
0x0@lemmy.zip 15 hours ago
That’s part gishgalloping part gaslighting, no?
ExperimentalGuy@programming.dev 13 hours ago
I love this idea of defining lying using other manipulation techniques when lying itself is such a simple thing in comparison
Grappling7155@lemmy.ca 12 hours ago
Innuendo studios has a nice series of videos on this on YouTube
TheRealKuni@midwest.social 10 hours ago
I was going to recommend this very thing.
Krudler@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Cherry picking is probably one of the most egregious
You can make a university-level essay on a subject, and people will identify one tiny irrelevant detail they disagree with and ignore the overall point
VitoRobles@lemmy.today 1 day ago
Cherry pick and move the goal post.
For example:
University-level essays? You know for-profit universities exist, right? If you don’t have a masters degree on the subject, then you have no right to speak on the topic.
Krudler@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Oh shit you triggered me with “you don’t have the right” lol
Yeah like I don’t have the right to talk about abortion, reproductive health, or anything like that because I don’t have ovaries
I don’t live in a society, I don’t have a mother, sister, thousands of females in my life who I care about. I don’t get to advocate for women’s reproductive rights, because I don’t have the right bits in my crotchal area
theparadox@lemmy.world 1 day ago
There is a series "The Alt Right Playbook" that covers a lot of bad faith and manipulative tactics, many of which are used online.
GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I hate the one where you call them a fascist (because they literally are) and then they come around and call you a “blue MAGA”.
like bitch, if I was “blue MAGA” I’d be making IEDs and forcing abortions on women and shit. ain’t nobody got time for that. I’m building a garden so I can fuckin eat this year.
BrainInABox@lemmy.ml 9 hours ago
I use bluemaga to refer to people who behave like MAGA supporters but for the Dems: people who believe all disagreement should be forbidden, like the guy currently stalking me across multiple instances to insult me because I disagreed with him about the Democrats policy on Gaza.
theparadox@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Calling someone “blue MAGA” is the equivalent of saying “no you!”
However, it’s time to stop pretending like some small group of “MAGA” conservatives have hijacked the party and taken things too far. The monied interests backing Trump are the same as have been backing Republicans for decades. The Federalist Society, the Heritage Foundation, etc. Mitch McConnell has been working to fill the federal courts with Federalist picks for a long time. Picking or just outright manufacturing court cases that would set new precedents. Hell, even those thinktanks are just recent iterations of the same interest’s attempts to shape the government as they see fit. Trump is just a nepo baby turned grifter who got lucky because his grift was actually effective at attracting and controlling the loudest segment of the Republican base.
Trump just transparently said “As long as I get filthy rich, get to be king, and you keep [metaphorically] sucking my dick, I’ll keep my followers in line and use my position to put your people in power so they can implement your ‘Project 25’ or whatever.” Republicans mostly objected to him because he lacked subtlety and was transparently greedy and petty. He ignored the game of slow, subtle changes and manipulation through “decorum” that Republicans had become experts in. Unfortunately for us, that worked wonders on a subset of the population
The people who helped those Republican politicians keep getting elected and basically wrote their proposed laws noticed Trump was popular. When it became apparent that Trump’s followers were loyal, the money jumped at the chance to fast track their vision and backed him completely. They helped tweak and hone Trump’s message to amplify his grifter magic. That plus some changes to election laws around the country, gerrymandering, and likely other more covert, extralegal vote manipulation got him back in power.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
Anyone who unironically says “blue MAGA” immediately give themselves away as someone to not take seriously.
dickalan@lemmy.world 1 day ago
No, I think you have the definition of that word wrong blue Maga is just the people on the left that are making money, commenting, andreacting to the shit people do on the right. CNN and MSNBC telling us the latest bullshit Trump has done is a blue Maga type behavior
Irelephant@lemm.ee 15 hours ago
Blue maga? I wouldn’t encourage people to vote for the Democrat party if it had any viable competition.
BrainInABox@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
You think all MAGA people are actively building IEDs.
Opinionhaver@feddit.uk 1 day ago
False dichotomy - Assuming that because someone doesn’t agree with one viewpoint, they must fully support the opposite. Framing the issue as if there are only two mutually exclusive positions, when in fact there may be many shades in between.
Strawmanning - Misrepresenting someone’s argument - usually by exaggerating, distorting, or taking it out of context - so it’s easier to attack or refute.
Ad hominem -Attacking the character, motives, or other traits of the person making the argument rather than addressing the substance of the argument itself.
Reductionism - The tendency to reduce every complex issue to a single cause - like blaming everything on capitalism, fascism, patriarchy, etc. - while ignoring other contributing factors.
Moving the goalposts - Changing the criteria of an argument or shifting its focus once the original point has been addressed or challenged - usually to avoid conceding. Hasty generalizations - Treating entire groups as if they’re uniform, attributing a trait or behavior of some individuals to all members of that group.
Oversimplification - Ignoring the nuance and complexity inherent in most issues, reducing them to overly simple terms or black-and-white thinking.bpalmerau@aussie.zone 1 day ago
Man knows his fallacies! Excellent. This bodes well for interesting discussion!
RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Moving the goalposts.
Butwhatabout.
Appeal to hypocrisy is big.
besmtt@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I thought it was called “whataboutism”?
RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Yeah, same thing.
reactionality@lemmy.sdf.org 20 hours ago
Appeal to fallacies is the self-important idiot’s way out of replying to someone’s argument.
lmmarsano@lemmynsfw.com 9 hours ago
Appeal to fallacies
I’ve seen people here misuse this claim. An argument from fallacy is a claim that the conclusion of a fallacious argument is false because of the fallacy.
Claiming an argument is invalid (therefore not worth serious consideration until corrected) due to fallacy is not an instance.
andybytes@programming.dev 12 hours ago
Tja@programming.dev 1 day ago
I have never seen an online discussion where gaslighting was used. People usually just learned the term and they think it’s a synonym for lying.
meco03211@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Gaslighting could take the form of saying “my political team would never do [the thing].” Their political team subsequently does [the thing]. Then claiming they never said the original statement. Sometimes they’re even so fucking stupid as to leave that comment visible so you can just screenshot it and ask “this you?”
… ask me how I know.
TheCriticalMember@aussie.zone 1 day ago
It wasn’t a nazi salute, he was just waving
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 1 day ago
That’s the main problem with relying on slang instead of real conversation. The need to do as little typing as possible means we encapsulate complex issues into ridiculously overgeneralized shorhand. The prime directive is to plow through our social media feeds as fast as possible, so we take in minimal information about each item, apply minimal quality control (mostly our own prejudices), use minimal thought to arrive at a value judgement that makes us feel morally impeccable, and spit out a condensed reply that takes as few keystrokes as possible. It’s really hillbilly-grade communication disguised as being enlightened and informed.
Ceedoestrees@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Appeal to Fallacy. It might not be a fallacy. A fallacy doesn’t make an argument wrong. There are degrees of fallacies. Claiming a statement is wrong because there might be a fallacy is a thought-ending argument. There’s more nuance and relatability in rhetoric. Refusing to engage because someone’s using a fallacy is reasonable, but calling it by name isn’t a magic spell that forces someone to throw in the towel.
0ops@lemm.ee 1 day ago
This is a good one. The use of fallacies doesn’t necessarily void an argument, it just fails to support it logically.
For example, I could craft a perfect, clean, cold-cut argument so water-tight and beautiful that even ben-fucking-shapiro would have a come-to-jesus. Calling my opponent a “dickhead” at the end (ad hominem) doesn’t prove anything, but it doesn’t nullify the entire rest of the argument either. Plus it’s fun.
Libra@lemmy.ml 2 days ago
Flooding the zone (which now that I think about it is close enough to gish-galloping for there not to be much of a distinction), whataboutism, and moving the goalposts are all extremely common.
Whataboutism and moving the goalposts are the ones I see most often.
Rin@lemm.ee 9 hours ago
Any logical falacy
MojoMcJojo@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Nice try, Elon
ocean@lemmy.selfhostcat.com 1 day ago
I think the most common thing I see online and offline is constantly adding more sources to the discussion to the point that the other person feels they can’t know anything. My grandmother does this with her nonsense and pseudo-intellectual books. Just because I haven’t read “why inner city black people have guns 3” doesn’t mean I can’t not be a racist.
optimistic@lemm.ee 1 day ago
It’s bad food. I get into bad hungry defensive moods with bad food.
whotookkarl@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Strawmanning because they won’t or can’t understand your argument, mistaking the map for the place usually because of equivocating on vaguely understood or multiple definitions, non-sequetor this is where someone just yaps for awhile based on the crap that falls out of their head based on the words they heard but didn’t get the point and is barely tracking
kittenzrulz123@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
I see ad hominem very often as well as strawmanning. Specifically on lemmy people will say tankie/auth or irl they’ll say woke/liberal and then use those insults to further strawman argumenents. Specifically multiple times I have said “hey I voted Kamala but her policies deeply concern me”, and people responded with “Uhh how dare you not vote Kamala and openly declare you hate democracy, freedom, and trans people”.
ConstantPain@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Someone started talking about my hair in the profile picture on a discussion on another site because they didn’t agree with what I said.
When people do shit like this I just disengage. Life is too short to waste with bad faith arguments.
Irelephant@lemm.ee 15 hours ago
Is there a word for dragging the argument to near-unrelated topics? E.g, post about lemmy.ml having comments on whether Ukraine has a nazi government.
yesman@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Online debate is a waste of time. You can somewhat short-circuit the bad-faith stuff by arguing values instead of facts or policy.
For example, if you say that the State has no right to remove trans kids from their parents, you’ve made a legal argument that’s vulnerable to all the bad faith and you may even be technically wrong. However if you argue that you trust parents to decide what’s best over the State, there is nothing to argue about. Bonus, you might actually get some real talk out of reactionaries.
TheRealKuni@midwest.social 10 hours ago
One I see people use frequently and I’m not sure they realize it’s a bad argument is the fallacy of relative privation.
“X is bad. We should do something to fix X.”
“Y is so much worse. I can’t believe you want to fix X when we need to fix Y.”
Both X and Y can be bad and need to be fixed. Fixing one doesn’t preclude fixing the other.
An alternate form of this is:
“A is bad”
“B is worse, so A is fine.”
Bytemeister@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
TheRealKuni@midwest.social 9 hours ago
Obviously yes. Doing so isn’t saying A is fine, doing so is saying B is worse, and bad is still better than worse.
If you tried to say that there was no reason to be concerned with A because B was worse, that’s a fallacy. But acknowledging that one of two options, while still bad, is LESS bad, isn’t a fallacy. That’s just being realistic.