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August 4, 2021 8:53 pm  #1


Sealioning

Sealioning (also spelled sea-lioning and sea lioning) is a type of trolling or harassment that consists of pursuing people with persistent requests for evidence or repeated questions, while maintaining a pretense of civility and sincerity. It may take the form of "incessant, bad-faith invitations to engage in debate".

The troll feigns ignorance and politeness, so that if the target is provoked into making an angry response, the troll can then act as the aggrieved party.[7][8] Sealioning can be performed by a single troll or by multiple ones acting in concert.[9] The technique of sealioning has been compared to the Gish gallop and metaphorically described as a denial-of-service attack targeted at human beings.[10]

An essay in the collection Perspectives on Harmful Speech Online, published by the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard, noted:

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, Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society (May 2019)[10]


Taken from:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning


No - It's not too late. It's not hopeless. Even there, there's something I can do. I just have to find the will. Ikiru (1952), film directed by Akira Kurosawa 
 

August 6, 2021 11:40 am  #2


Re: Sealioning

Thank you for posting this. Words are the weapon of my STBX. If only there were bruises where they have inflicted injury.

 

August 6, 2021 11:45 am  #3


Re: Sealioning

I didn't know this.

 

August 6, 2021 6:04 pm  #4


Re: Sealioning

Sorry MyExodus. My late GIDXH was passive aggressive and I learned how to make my points to get around this. He then turned to this sealioning/word salad tactic. It's too much. We had no children so I went no contact. Hoping your divorce comes through soon.

I posted this for our forum's group dynamics, too. Am an old-time techie who has seen the destruction of some online forums for over 20 years due to one poster's sealioning. 
 


No - It's not too late. It's not hopeless. Even there, there's something I can do. I just have to find the will. Ikiru (1952), film directed by Akira Kurosawa 
     Thread Starter
 

August 6, 2021 6:11 pm  #5


Re: Sealioning

yes I didn't know either - yet another technique nailed to go with trickle-truthing, darvo and gas-lighting.  Not to mention the first one I learned - gay in denial.

it is good to read a description like that.

Deception is no fun, it's anti-fun.

I went looking in google - animals that practise deception on their own species.  There are not so many examples where it is within a species but there's enough - the praying mantis who eats her partner's head off or a wasp that's eaten by her babies along with a few unfertilised eggs she's laid in for them to eat, a few examples like that.  And widespread there's a certain amount of cannibalism as in our own, in times of starvation.  There were quite a few examples of trickery for gain - females or bananas, of mimicking a female to get past a dominant male and mate with his harem or pretending to have stronger claws to intimidate a rival - but I didn't read of any creature doing it simply for their own entertainment.  

Don't know, I suppose it is possible that there are other species apart from our own where it happens and we just haven't had the eyes to see it yet, but whether they do or don't I still don't like it.

 

 

August 6, 2021 7:43 pm  #6


Re: Sealioning

MJM017 wrote:

I posted this for our forum's group dynamics, too. Am an old-time techie who has seen the destruction of some online forums for over 20 years due to one poster's sealioning. 
 

I've noticed this derailing good discussions on various fora i am part of - I didn't know it had a name! Handy info, thanks MJM17.

 

August 9, 2021 12:03 pm  #7


Re: Sealioning

Wow, I just learned what "trickle-truth" is.  Wish I'd known that one before.

 

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