Hey all,

As discussed here, I am looking for 3 new moderators to help with this community.

Please review this post and vote for the candidate you would like to see help on this community.

In no particular order, the candidates are:

I invite you to review users post history when deciding on voting.

This thread will be open for 72 hours (until Friday June 23rd, 8PM ET) at which point voting will stop. Any votes after this time will not be counted. I will try to lock this thread after that time so people do not accidentally continue voting.

Everyone gets 1 vote, including the users being considered. The top 3 will be given mod powers of this community to help with organization of discussions and votes.

Please vote by calling the persons name. For example, if I you wanted to vote for TheDude you would reply with: TheDude

  • Seeker of CarcosaEnglish
    3•1 year ago

    I make a deliberate attempt to not sealion,

    spoiler

    “Where is the evidence for that opinion?”

    “But doesn’t [x] really mean [y]?”

    “What about [other issue]—how do you explain that?”

    “What’s wrong with a polite question?”

    “I’m just trying to engage in civil debate.”

    This series of questions may seem like a well-intentioned search for answers. It’s not—it’s a simplified example of a rhetorical strategy called sealioning. Sealioning is an intentional, combative performance of cluelessness. Rhetorically, sealioning fuses persistent questioning—often about basic information, information easily found elsewhere, or unrelated or tangential points—with a loudly-insisted-upon commitment to reasonable debate. It disguises itself as a sincere attempt to learn and communicate. Sealioning thus works both to exhaust a target’s patience, attention, and communicative effort, and to portray the target as unreasonable. While the questions of the “sea lion” may seem innocent, they’re intended maliciously and have harmful consequences.:::

    Amy Johnson, The Multiple Harms of Sea Lions

    You’re sealioning in this very thread; you’re just feigning ignorance and exploiting the fact that a term originating from a webcomic isn’t well defined. Here you are incessantly replying in multiple comment chains, asking asinine rhetorical questions, insisting you just want an open discussion, and making sure to explicitly mention how civil you have remained. The only point of contention is that you’re asking rhetorical questions instead of asking for evidence.

    It’s abundantly clear what you’re doing. I’ve given my points, you’ve countered. It’s in a public forum that others can access and make their own judgment. My standard for engaging discussion doesn’t include chasing comment chains and rebutting throwaway remarks only to have them slightly rephrased or framed in a flimsy example. I will not engage with you after this comment.

    • @goatEnglish
      -2•1 year ago

      Asinine rhetorical questions? bruh, I’m defending myself from your insults and falsehoods. And yeah, I’m responding to comment chains, so what? I want to hear what people say; I’m a candidate. I’m already learning a lot.

      Truthfully, I think you’re sealioning, at least according to your moving definitions, which you’ve already changed.

      You only have 6 comments on Agora in the past day, all of which contain you attacking others.

      And you’ve also listed your information incorrectly twice, both my burggit account and Bit’s comment chain. I like the Bit thread a lot since you make claims about Bit despite not knowing what the deleted comments contained.

      But hey, let’s read through this paper anywho!

      Sealioning, which can be performed by a single user or as a tag-team effort, may feel familiar: it evokes the toddler who incessantly asks why, the adolescent who has just discovered philosophy, the condescending family member who disapproves of your life choices.

      Questions—shaped by explicit or implicit expectations about who has the right to question and who can be questioned about what—impose labor by demanding the questioned party either answer or appear indifferent; providing explanations and maintaining patience takes time and effort

      What a nice broad definition, this can include everything – convenient! But condescending and denying people the ability to question you? Sounds familiar, perhaps the very same that calls others trolls, bad-faith actors and sealions whenever they disagreed with you.

      Oh, and uhhhh… This is really embarrassing, but you’re also sealioning by your very own paper, oops.

      On the other, sealioning exploits threading capabilities and often launches through search. A social media platform with comprehensive search functions is a database in which every word is indexed, and every public word retrievable. Keyword searches thus become scouting tools for attacks.

      Like you listing my burggit account (having to find my separate account that I’ve never linked before), you listing deleted comments from a large comment chain.

      (Honestly this is a stupid definition. Using the search function is sealioning? Fuck off with that, Amy Johnson.)

      my take? Sealioning is just a narcissist person’s argument to get out of one or deny anyone shooting them down. As you said yourself:

      Co-existing in a space isn’t an open invitation for you to repeatedly argue the same point past a persons point of comfort, for the sake of your personal definition of “debate”. When it’s clear the debate has run its course and the person is clearly being emotionally effected, if you persist then you’re acting in bad faith.

      Ah, the irony~