Comradeship // Freechat

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. Make 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

Truth does not fear investigation

death to america

I've come across the word, but l have never been subjected to it

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.

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 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.

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

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 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 ~~beliefs~~ bullshit, and they're now trying to make it the last line of defense before their vibes-based worldview.