Not that you needed to be told this
September 4, 2015 7:37 AM   Subscribe

The biggest reason why people hate sealioning is because responding to it is a complete waste of time.
posted by MartinWisse (177 comments total) 36 users marked this as a favorite
 
With all due respect, this is the sort of attitude that allows people like Donald Trump to be seriously considered as somebody who should have access to the launch codes.

Presenting evidence is important, and there's got to be some nuance that allows rational discourse without ceding ground to concern trolls.
posted by schmod at 7:46 AM on September 4, 2015 [29 favorites]


You know, I've seen the comic, and to be perfectly honest, my sympathies are with the sea lion. Those two humans come off as species-ist, and the sea lion is bringing their assumptions into question. That's a brave sea lion, if you ask me.
posted by panama joe at 7:49 AM on September 4, 2015 [28 favorites]


I like @NoraReed's approach to sealioning: asserting that questions take up her valuable time, and that she requires compensation before she'll answer—and that the asker should prepare for the possibility that the answer might be "lol nope"
posted by infinitewindow at 7:55 AM on September 4, 2015 [14 favorites]


But there's a difference between asking for evidence from a presidential candidate in meetings and debates, using those answers to decide how to vote in an election versus concern trolls harassing someone for the purpose of wasting their time and not really caring what the answers are.
posted by numaner at 7:57 AM on September 4, 2015 [35 favorites]


The author's assumes that people who want to know would have done their own digging, come to the same conclusions as him, and that therefore any request for clarification is malicious. These assumptions are all ridiculous, and present the author as condescending and ideological. If there's a point about constant debating to be made, it's not going to be with such flawed assumptions. Ironically, in the comic the people are being racist and the sealion's questions are perfectly reasonable -- and that's the example he uses to support his thesis?
posted by Spanner Nic at 7:58 AM on September 4, 2015 [8 favorites]


I don't spend a lot of time on Twitter, but sealioning is totally a thing at my workplace.

The amount of time I spend investigating or "doing some analysis" because someone doesn't like what's happening and wants it to slow down or go away is insane.
posted by pulposus at 7:59 AM on September 4, 2015 [36 favorites]


My main reaction to reading that was mild irritation that the age-old tactic of asking-questions-in-a-dickish-way has become "a thing". I've probably missed something.

The comic was good though!
posted by TheAlarminglySwollenFinger at 7:59 AM on September 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


The writer offers a bit of a loophole here:
This is the "debate principle"; when you go to a debate, you educate yourself on the topics at hand, and only request evidence when a claim is either quite outlandish or unflinchingly obscure.
When somebody says "Mexicans are crossing the border to steal our jobs and rape people," whether the speaker is an ostensible presidential candidate or your drunk uncle, surely that qualifies as "quite outlandish." Question away.
posted by Faint of Butt at 8:00 AM on September 4, 2015 [2 favorites]


Sea lion gets shut down!
posted by splitpeasoup at 8:00 AM on September 4, 2015 [7 favorites]


I was about to jump into this thread to present a vigorous defense of Inuit/First Nations hunting practices. Oh well.

In all seriousness, this line of thinking ("Don't respond to sea lions") seems reasonable on the surface, but it really isn't. The truth is, it's basically impossible to tell if somebody is asking a question in "bad faith" (want evidence? Notice how difficult it is, sometimes, to tell when somebody is being sarcastic? "That dress looks great on you." "Are you making fun of me!?!?!").

Humans are actually really, really bad at uncovering deception. The existence of our entire legal profession would seem to support this. We wouldn't need courts if we could all just look at somebody and say "Oh, they're lying" or "Oh they're arguing in bad faith", and all come to the same conclusion, as if it was as simple as that. A significant chunk of our GDP is dedicated towards uncovering deception of various kinds (foreign and domestic) and it still doesn't work very well.

So that's why when you are making an argument, and somebody asks you for evidence to back up your argument, you should be able to reference some kind of evidence that is available to the questioner. That is the closest thing we have to the ability to ensure that people are not simply fabricating beliefs or facts out of thin air.
posted by Avenger at 8:04 AM on September 4, 2015 [17 favorites]


In the old days, we called this the Socratic Method. You're asking questions in order to get the answerer to question their own assumptions.

It pissed people off in the old days, too. Socrates got sentenced to death for sealioning.
posted by clawsoon at 8:08 AM on September 4, 2015 [72 favorites]


Sea lion gets shut down!

I hate to break it to you, but that example has nothing to do with sealioning. For one thing, no one was asking a question at any point in the conversation. Sealioning is pretty specifically about requesting information in bad faith in order to derail a discussion.
posted by kewb at 8:11 AM on September 4, 2015 [20 favorites]


Socrates: Meh, that's an awfully rosy view of sealioning. I agree with the article -- questioners should try to educate themselves first before asking for clarification. Otherwise the questioner is wasting the questionee's time... and that *is* a bad-faith move.
posted by GrammarMoses at 8:12 AM on September 4, 2015 [11 favorites]


Presenting evidence is important, and there's got to be some nuance that allows rational discourse without ceding ground to concern trolls.

There's a difference between presenting evidence and engaging in debate with sealioning, though.

If you want to present evidence, you can just, like, do that. Make a blog post, make a statement. At most, make a single response to a sealioner and then be done with it. But continuing in an ongoing debate with a sealion-er will not work, because the sealion-er does not want to listen to your evidence. What they're trying to do, instead, is to talk you into contradicting yourself so they can go "ah-HA, I was RIGHT and you were WRONG!"

You can't have a debate with someone who isn't going to listen to what you have to say. Sea lion-ers aren't going to listen to what you have to say, so it isn't a debate. It's them setting you up to be the fall guy in a drama they are directing in their heads for the benefit of their cronies.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:14 AM on September 4, 2015 [29 favorites]


If you've read any of Socrates' stuff, you can see how the people around him would not have a rosy view of it at all. Most of his questions were loaded, asked in bad faith.

Plato's Socrates (who may be a somewhat fictionalized version of the real Socrates) was even worse.

Maybe it's time to re-consider our rosy view of Socrates.
posted by clawsoon at 8:15 AM on September 4, 2015 [9 favorites]


In the old days, we called this the Socratic Method. You're asking questions in order to get the answerer to question their own assumptions.

It pissed people off in the old days, too. Socrates got sentenced to death for sealioning.


Sealioning is a bit like the Socratic method, in that the questioner is pretending to ask but is actually attempting to make an assertion. The difference, I think, is that in sealioning the assertion never goes beyond the derail; Socrates actually had a coherent set of positions which he advanced.

And even so, the Socratic method can be inverted or balanced: "Why do you ask that question?" Past a certain point, pretending innocent curiosity when you actually intend nothing of the sort stops being a path to knowledge and starts being little more than passive-aggressive asshole behavior.
posted by kewb at 8:17 AM on September 4, 2015 [32 favorites]


Wait, let me re-phrase that as a loaded question:

What makes you think Socrates was a great guy about whom we should have a positive opinion? Why do you think he pissed people around him off so much?
posted by clawsoon at 8:18 AM on September 4, 2015 [6 favorites]


What makes you think Socrates was a great guy about whom we should have a positive opinion? Why do you think he pissed people around him off so much?

What are you assuming in asking that question?

EDIT: I really can't tell if this is the worst 1000th comment or the most appropriate 1000th comment ever.
posted by kewb at 8:20 AM on September 4, 2015 [15 favorites]


What are you assuming about his assumptions, and why are you questioning his question?
posted by GrammarMoses at 8:22 AM on September 4, 2015 [4 favorites]


This does happen, but:

Please don't attribute to malice that which can be explained by a genuine desire to understand.

Also, please don't assume that I'm being malicious when I genuinely don't know many things that you think "common sense" would inform. I grew up differently from you, and my parents didn't let me go to most of the popular movies of the day or watch "Three's Company" on TV or have friends whose parents were divorced, and I spent my time reading novels and hanging out with my cat. I really do not understand a lot of things that may seem obvious to you.
posted by amtho at 8:22 AM on September 4, 2015 [21 favorites]


This is a hoary old conversation exploit, well-known in competitive debating, often called flooding. And in most debate societies, it will get you called out/sanctioned/told to sit down.

Sealioning is better thought of as a hack of the Socratic method, as the questioner doesn't really care about the answers (where as, in a good-faith Socratic dialogue they're the point). A sealioner just wants to keep the respondent off-balance, defensive and flustered.

You can call them out, and that works sometimes, but that still makes the sealion the centre of attention. Fighting fire with fire you can use bridging, the thing all politicians use. "You raise a very good point, which I think is very important to the topic of..." It can be really frustrating to the sealioner, as you just keep bringing the conversation back to the points you want to make. Bridging is a slimy technique all by itself, but it takes attention away from the asshole and, most importantly, diffuses the line of questioning to third-parties (which is the only reason to use it, IMO).

If it's just you and the sealion, disengaging is better. Dont' give a puppy that's misbehaving attention; that's what it wants.
posted by bonehead at 8:22 AM on September 4, 2015 [60 favorites]


I'm actually surprised to find that people don't associate the Socratic mode with dickishness already. It's a rhetorical gambit, inherently neither good or bad, and I've seen it used well and thoughtfully in some contexts, but boy howdy am I having trouble thinking of a time when someone I was in an actual conversation with defended their engagement with e.g. "I was merely engaging in Socratic dialogue" who wasn't just straight up being an obnoxious dick.
posted by cortex at 8:23 AM on September 4, 2015 [58 favorites]


Sealioning would appear to be largely a matter of perspective. A person may be lazily ignorant without asking questions in bad faith, and another may be in the right while asking intentionally misleading questions.

Magic debate bombs aren't.
posted by Mooski at 8:23 AM on September 4, 2015 [4 favorites]


When facing Socrates in the wrestling ring, use the figure-four hemlock.
posted by chavenet at 8:23 AM on September 4, 2015 [13 favorites]


So that's why when you are making an argument, and somebody asks you for evidence to back up your argument, you should be able to reference some kind of evidence that is available to the questioner. That is the closest thing we have to the ability to ensure that people are not simply fabricating beliefs or facts out of thin air.

OK, but "offering evidence to support your assertion" isn't what sealioning is about at all. As an example, here on the blue, sealioning is most common in discussions about sexual harassment and assault. A man who has never been harassed a day in his life will demand "evidence" from a woman who has already been harassed many times that the experiences she's talking about actually happened. A woman's exposition of events from her own life is treated as antithetical to evidence, even though her testimony would have to be taken under consideration as such in a court of law. Dudes who sealion make it very clear that our words will never be worth anything.

So OK, since they're telling us our testimony is worthless, maybe we'll try another route and give them some statistics instead. Whoops! No dice. They'll just tell us those statistics are bullshit/biased/not intended to be taken seriously because they know a lot of women and no one has ever told them about being harassed or raped. And on and on and on. They're not asking questions to get to the bottom of anything or ascertain any kind of truth, they're asking questions to get a rise out of us, waste our time, frustrate the hell out of us, and eventually convince us to stop speaking up. They might not readily admit it, but it's one of the oldest silencing techniques in the book -- because it works.

Also, once you've been on the receiving end of it a couple dozen hundred thousand million times, it's actually incredibly easy to tell when somebody is actually looking for an answer vs. just JAQing off -- someone who's looking for an answer leaves you the hell alone when they get a reasonable approximation of one, whereas a sealion won't ever stop until you block him from communicating with you or flee the scene altogether.
posted by divined by radio at 8:24 AM on September 4, 2015 [124 favorites]


I loved high school geometry as it was where we learned about proofs and truth tables. It is also where I learned why sea lioning is bad even though I didn't know what sea loining was and that term had not yet been developed. Sea lioning is not just asking for evidence in support of theorems, but continuing asking for evidence all the way down the chain of theorems until postulates have been reached and continuing to ask for evidence once these postulates/givens/first principles have been reached. Sea lions would deny that some things must simply be accepted in order to have a discussion about anything, for example in a discussion about pentagonal tiling a sea lion will keep pressing for evidence/supporting arguments even when this line of questioning has reached if it is true that for any two points there really is exactly one line containing them.
posted by Meeks Ormand at 8:25 AM on September 4, 2015 [12 favorites]


Presenting evidence is important, and there's got to be some nuance that allows rational discourse without ceding ground to concern trolls.

Sure, I think a part of that is recognizing a couple of things.

First, context matters. A casual discussion about one's own opinion and experience doesn't need to be turned into a battleground for a scholarly lit review.

And second, in some cases those demands for evidence really are in bad faith and asymmetrical. The people denying evolution, climate-change, racism, sexism, homophobia, biphobia, or transphobia often are going to handwave away any evidence offered, and won't provide any evidence to support their claims.

It's not that hard to figure the second case out. Is the person demanding evidence making a strong counter-claim? (Bonus points based on the tone in which it's presented.) Is the person providing evidence to back their own claims? How does the person respond to a quick reference to peer-reviewed work on the topic?
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 8:25 AM on September 4, 2015 [5 favorites]


You can't have a debate with someone who isn't going to listen to what you have to say.

You can't have a conversation when two people are starting from, and proceeding along, radically different lines of thought. I like the point the post makes that reasonable-seeming questions can be cover for a badgering agenda, and that the person with "the natural instinct to respond in good faith to neutrally-phrased questions" is at a disadvantage, especially when interrogated to the point of anger (which was the questioner's goal in the first place). It was never about the thing under discussion; it was about using someone as a means to a lulz, as EC points out. And that is some. bullshit.

It would be useful to have a sealion identification guide, so I could spot it early and at a distance, even if it makes the assumption of good faith more complicated.
posted by MonkeyToes at 8:26 AM on September 4, 2015


Exceptions are relevant in talking about discourse norms. But discourse norms and assessment of what's really going on in the conversation is more a matter of Bayesian probability.

Another aspect of the comic is that the sealion is inserting itself into a conversation that didn't originally include it. Sometimes that's appropriate, usually it isn't. So another sign of sealioning is that the person just doesn't have any history of participation that doesn't involve repeatedly asking for evidence on a controversial topic.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 8:40 AM on September 4, 2015 [3 favorites]


Please don't attribute to malice that which can be explained by a genuine desire to understand.

Okay, but we're kind of not talking about that.

Say we're talking about my making a statement that the rents in New York are going up too high. There's a difference between someone responding like:
"Wait, I don't get it - I thought that everyone in New York lives in tenements, or at least that's what I heard - and tenements are supposed to be cheap. So what am I not understanding?"
and someone responding like:
"Correct me if I am wrong, but I have a study here which shows that 39.5% of the population of New York lives in tenements. How do you reconcile that fact with your claim that 'the rent is too damn high'?"
With the first case, it's obvious that the person is genuinely and sincerely open to examining the frame of reference they've had, and that they are open to the possibility that their frame of reference might be imperfect. That's fine. But with the second case, it's obvious that it's a person who thinks that you're wrong and they're right, and they are trying to cross-examine you as if this was a trial and they were Jack McCoy trying to win a case or something.

People are just saying that the Jack McCoy kind of thing is bad. Sincere questions are no problem. And lots of us can tell the difference.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:40 AM on September 4, 2015 [12 favorites]


Sealioning is sort of a combination of a Gish Gallup and JAQing off.

Basically it's a bad faith effort to exhaust your opponent then declare victory when they stop replying. Gee, I guess you can't really justify your belief that women should have human rights if you won't answer my perfectly innocent and honest questions.

I find it kind of disturbing that so many people here are trying to justify the practice.
posted by sotonohito at 8:41 AM on September 4, 2015 [54 favorites]


Meeks Ormand: Sea lions would deny that some things must simply be accepted in order to have a discussion about anything, for example in a discussion about pentagonal tiling a sea lion will keep pressing for evidence/supporting arguments even when this line of questioning has reached if it is true that for any two points there really is exactly one line containing them.

There's been a lot of fascinating mathematics that has come out of doing exactly that. Non-Euclidean geometry, Gödel's incompleteness theorems, infinite set theory, etc. (Whether the kids in your high school geometry class would've been able to come up with anything fascinating after drilling all the way down, though, is a different question.)
posted by clawsoon at 8:46 AM on September 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


Face-to-face, I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt; they may sealion me once and take advantage of that trust, but I won't trust them again after that.

Online, I have to judge from the tone of the question. If the question is so basic that 2 seconds of Googling will answer it, I often ignore it, because why didn't they just Google that? Either they are so ignorant on the topic that it would take me hours to bring them up to speed, or they are sealioning. I don't feel obligated to engage in either case. I'm not their mom.

If I'm really confused as to their intentions, I might go check their comment history; have they started flamewars and trolled others before? If so, it's either a flag or ignore situation. Online, I'm not the only person in the conversation, either, so someone else is likely already engaging them, which reveals much.
posted by emjaybee at 8:47 AM on September 4, 2015 [5 favorites]


If you've read any of Socrates' stuff, you can see how the people around him would not have a rosy view of it at all. Most of his questions were loaded, asked in bad faith.

Plato's Socrates (who may be a somewhat fictionalized version of the real Socrates) was even worse.


Whenever I hear someone talk glowingly about Socrates, I think, "Have you read Socrates?" He never asks an open-ended question. It's all, "Do you agree that [four paragraphs of Socrates going on]."

Other person: "Yes."

Socrates: "And do you further agree... [five paragraphs this time]?"

Other Person: "Yes."

Socrates: "Then you must agree that...[lengthy conclusion]."

Other person: [opens and closes mouth helplessly, vows never to come back]
posted by not that girl at 8:47 AM on September 4, 2015 [36 favorites]


Another heuristic for identifying a sealion: They won't take a polite, "no" for an answer.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 8:50 AM on September 4, 2015 [9 favorites]


Some of the issue is also that asking for evidence on the Internet, when by definition you have an enormously powerful, rapid-response research tool at your disposal is different than asking such questions in person or over other media.

More broadly, it's an argument for the "lurk, then post" approach to any website; get a sense of what the well-traveled ground is and what the norms of the discussion are before just jumping in. This doesn't mean those can't be questioned, but it does mean they must be questioned in an informed way.
posted by kewb at 8:50 AM on September 4, 2015 [12 favorites]


Sea lion gets shut down!

posted by splitpeasoup at 10:00 AM on September 4 [+] [!]


That looks to be like pretty much the exact opposite of sealioning. Sealioning is when someone comes into a discussion asking questions (disingenuously) and requesting data supporting the assertion. This person came into a discussion and provided specific data to refute the assertion being proposed.

So, what are you saying here?
posted by blurker at 8:56 AM on September 4, 2015 [2 favorites]


When somebody in a conversation isn't actually interested in the truth/falsehood of the things being discussed, that's entering the territory of bullshit. That's the key difference between somebody genuinely having a Socratic dialogue and a sealion. The Socratic is actually interested in searching for truth. The sea lion doesn't care about truth or falsehood. They are playing a game.

I think the people worried about the two being confused have their concerns misdirected. If sealioning is so common that everybody writes-off Socratic-looking questioning of any kind then the fault lies with the sealions for scorching that particular bit of earth. They have flipped the default view of such dialogue from being a trustworthy search for truth to being a bad-faith waste of time.

But that doesn't mean the death of genuine debate or genuine Socratic dialogue. It just means that some social prerequisites to establish intent and trust are required before people are willing to proceed. You have to show you're not acting in bad faith, you don't just get the benefit of the doubt by phrasing your questions in a certain way.
posted by delicious-luncheon at 8:57 AM on September 4, 2015 [11 favorites]


People never want to be convinced that they're wrong, and will get irritated if you try. If you make straightforward statements of fact to convince me, I will be irritated. If you Socrato-lion me to convince me, I will be irritated.

It's very difficult to create a discussion where two people who disagree are willing to learn from each other. A lot of work has to be put into building a base of mutual respect, trust, and openness. You both have to be willing to be friends with someone you profoundly disagree with.
posted by clawsoon at 8:58 AM on September 4, 2015 [6 favorites]


My general rule is that if someone asks for evidence, they might be worth talking to. If they demand "proof," then they're just wasting your time.

Proof requires a standard. Scientific proof is not the same as mathematical proof is not the same as legal proof. In the absence of a standard, anyone can dismiss any amount of evidence as "not proof." And indeed, that's exactly what happens when some randomite starts insisting that you prove something.
posted by lore at 8:59 AM on September 4, 2015 [18 favorites]


If sealioning is so bad, why do so many people get away with it? (Provide detailed footnotes with your answer).
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 8:59 AM on September 4, 2015 [4 favorites]


The truth is, it's basically impossible to tell if somebody is asking a question in "bad faith"

Oh, context can offer some very good clues.
posted by Artw at 9:01 AM on September 4, 2015 [32 favorites]


The Socratic is actually interested in searching for truth. The sea lion doesn't care about truth or falsehood. They are playing a game.

I disagree. In my experience, both Socratics and sealions are convinced that they have the truth already, and that it's important that they convince other people of the truth they have. Like not that girl says above, Socrates never asked a question in good faith.

Trolls do it for the lulz. Sealions do it because You Are Wrong.
posted by clawsoon at 9:02 AM on September 4, 2015 [3 favorites]


The only thing Socratic Method and Sealioning have in common is lots of questions. In the socratic method the questioner is the teacher, carefully (one hopes) leading the student to a conclusion. In Sealioning the questioner is an interloper, jumping into an existing conversation so as to take it over and halt it, hitting the questioned party with a thousand tiny bad-faith question with the purpose of making them finally just walk away for their own sanity, so that the Sealion can then say that the conversation ended with the other person's head exploding from the sheer force of the Sealion's brilliant questions, donthcha know?
posted by Navelgazer at 9:05 AM on September 4, 2015 [15 favorites]


I think a lot of the sealioning thing ties into the general right wing and/or just plain jerk love of pretending to have no clue about how humans actually interact. The sudden declaration that understanding the subtext of a person's statements or questions is a superhuman power or evidence of claims of psychic abilities when, in fact everyone does it daily.

Distinguishing between genuine questions and sealioning isn't particularly difficult, it doesn't require mind reading, and everyone who claims it does is simply lying.
posted by sotonohito at 9:05 AM on September 4, 2015 [17 favorites]


It's really depressing that there seem to be so many people blaming the targets of sealioning for not being able to sift out good-faith questions from bad. If you want to get upset at the problems with this kind of discourse, blame the sealions for making it impossible, people.
posted by zombieflanders at 9:06 AM on September 4, 2015 [21 favorites]


If you've read any of Socrates' stuff, you can see how the people around him would not have a rosy view of it at all. Most of his questions were loaded, asked in bad faith.

Plato's Socrates (who may be a somewhat fictionalized version of the real Socrates) was even worse.


If you've ever read any actual Socrates rather than someone else's account of him, please quit being a miser and show them to the rest of the world, since as far as the rest of the world is concerned Socrates never wrote anything down and in fact talked shit about those who did.
posted by absalom at 9:07 AM on September 4, 2015 [30 favorites]


Navelgazer: In the socratic method the questioner is the teacher, carefully (one hopes) leading the student to a conclusion.

I'm pretty sure that's exactly how sealions think of themselves. It's the Dunning-Kruger effect at work.
posted by clawsoon at 9:11 AM on September 4, 2015 [4 favorites]


I think a lot of the sealioning thing ties into the general right wing and/or just plain jerk love of pretending to have no clue about how humans actually interact.

As the right-wing talking point goes, "cover the debate." Which includes creating the appearance of debate through strategies like the Gish Gallop.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 9:12 AM on September 4, 2015 [2 favorites]


absalom: If you've ever read any actual Socrates rather than someone else's account of him, please quit being a miser...

Fair point. I was thinking of the Socratic dialogues that are considered by (some? most?) scholars to probably be closer to what Socrates actually said. Socrates is a bit less of a dick in those ones.
posted by clawsoon at 9:14 AM on September 4, 2015


The Socratic method does mean someone is confident that they are right and you are wrong. But often people are much more confident about that than they should be.


Referring to a "debate principle" in a bit about sealioning is a little tricky, because the biggest problem is the sealion is debating something they were never invited to debate. I always felt that was the point of contention, not that they were Just Asking Questions. The sealion behaves as though you and he are equal but opposing sides of a debate, rather than he happened to overhear you mention his pet subject and he showed up to demonstrate how wrong you are.

On some feminism blogs I read, there were rules against "Feminism 101" questions, which was kind of the principle of you don't want to stop the advanced discussion every time a freshman stumbles in.

The sealion likes to think he is interrupting a "circlejerk" or "groupthink" and challenging something that has gone unchallenged. "Excuse me, but have you considered the possibility that the Emperor is wearing no clothes?"
posted by RobotHero at 9:17 AM on September 4, 2015 [10 favorites]


The sealion behaves as though you and he are equal but opposing sides of a debate, rather than he happened to overhear you mention his pet subject and he showed up to demonstrate how wrong you are.

Or found the discussion through search keywords.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 9:23 AM on September 4, 2015 [6 favorites]


It's really depressing that there seem to be so many people blaming the targets of sealioning for not being able to sift out good-faith questions from bad. If you want to get upset at the problems with this kind of discourse, blame the sealions for making it impossible, people.

That begs the question in the classic. That is, it assumes as a conclusion that "sealoning" is the case.

Even with the examples in this thread, and especially the original comic, it seems like an underhanded trick that lets you shut down any criticism of what you're saying, and in addition offers you a convenient way of ridiculing anyone who questions you.

The sealion behaves as though you and he are equal but opposing sides of a debate, rather than he happened to overhear you mention his pet subject and he showed up to demonstrate how wrong you are.

This is another reason the original comic is bad. In real life it would indeed be odd for a stranger to walk over and join a private conversation. On the Internet, unless you're in a private forum, your conversations aren't private. If you're posting in a public place, it's a public conversation, and you can't pretend surprise when someone else joins in.

If I write an essay on something and post it to Facebook, or to my public website, and people come in and comment on it and ask questions, it's silly for me to get upset.
posted by Sangermaine at 9:24 AM on September 4, 2015 [5 favorites]


It's important to remember that Socrates was a teacher, using a specific technique on students, who were there to learn. He wasn't (most of the time) doing it to some random person.

Lectures are perfectly appropriate to a classroom, but utterly wrong at cocktail parties or family dinners.
posted by bonehead at 9:25 AM on September 4, 2015 [33 favorites]


The linked article doesn't really get into the social dynamics underlying sealioning. Unfortunately, that's an integral element, and sealioning can't be explained without reference to it.

Sealioning is the act of addressing people who are more-or-less strangers and trying to structure that discursive interaction in a very rigid way, but doing so while giving the appearance of being reasonable by using civil (in a sense, overly-refined) language in the process. It's an aggressive act, and it positions the question-asker as an arbiter of truth even though they're just some person on the internet.

It's totally different from the Socratic method. The Socratic method is a pedagogical technique, not a conversational style, and it's intended to help students understand and reason more clearly. It's not a reasonable way to interact with ostensible social peers in a generic social context.

This is all another way of saying that sealioning is necessarily an act that violates social norms, but does so by appearing to recontextualize the situation -- we aren't strangers who are only talking because I'm demanding evidence from you, we're having a debate now because I said so. That's why it's unpleasant and inappropriate. Not because it aspires to greater heights of analytic precision and empirical validity, but because it's a disingenuous and socially-perverse act.

On preview: I agree with bonehead.
posted by clockzero at 9:29 AM on September 4, 2015 [46 favorites]


On the Internet, unless you're in a private forum, your conversations aren't private. If you're posting in a public place, it's a public conversation, and you can't pretend surprise when someone else joins in.

To borrow from divined by radio's example upthread, the logical extension of this is that some dude barging in on a conversation about harassment is totally OK if the women are walking down the street, and that they're expected (if not obliged) to provide him the "courtesy" of an answer.
posted by zombieflanders at 9:34 AM on September 4, 2015 [2 favorites]


That's not the logical equivalent. There's an expectation in a real conversation between two people on a street that it is private, meaning between those two people, and it's a social breach to walk up and join without invitation.

It's hard to argue that there's an expectation on a public web site open to all visitors that articles aren't for all visitors. Especially on something like Twitter.
posted by Sangermaine at 9:38 AM on September 4, 2015 [2 favorites]


Sing with me now!
   Socrates was a sealion
   Nietzsche was a neckbeard
   Trotsky was a troll...
posted by Atom Eyes at 9:39 AM on September 4, 2015 [7 favorites]


On the Internet, unless you're in a private forum, your conversations aren't private. If you're posting in a public place, it's a public conversation, and you can't pretend surprise when someone else joins in.

This sounds sort of reasonable on its face, but it fails to make a crucial distinction: "pretending" to be surprised isn't the same as being genuinely uninterested in talking to someone, and there's very little one can say to defend an ostensible absolute right to harass other simply because one can.

I mean, one of the biggest problems with modern, internet-based communications is that many people act as though elementary social norms like not harassing others no longer apply. It's rather bizarre to equate privacy with basic human decency, and say that if the former is not a condition of interaction then the second shouldn't be either.
posted by clockzero at 9:43 AM on September 4, 2015 [17 favorites]


Sangermaine: "It's hard to argue that there's an expectation on a public web site open to all visitors that articles aren't for all visitors. Especially on something like Twitter."

I don't think it is that hard at all to argue that my posts on Twitter are for my followers.
posted by RobotHero at 9:48 AM on September 4, 2015 [5 favorites]


Sealioning: actually, it's about the ethics of responding to questions.
posted by maxwelton at 9:54 AM on September 4, 2015 [16 favorites]


You don't get to functionally choose your audience in a publicly available medium. People who see and hear what you say and write will think they are entitled to respond to it. And while that's probably misguided in many cases, the distinction is academic because I don't think we've yet come up with a way to diminish entitlement or self-importance in the internet-going public at large. This is one of the first things I learned in j-school, and I credit my professors for being forward-thinking enough to consider that an important part of their curriculum back in 2006.
posted by Phyltre at 9:57 AM on September 4, 2015 [2 favorites]


I don't think it is that hard at all to argue that my posts on Twitter are for my followers.

They are if they're protected tweets. That's a setting you can choose.

Public tweets? That's hard to argue, especially since there's an option that limits tweets to followers if you don't use it it's reasonable to think you want your tweets to be public.

If you're making public tweets no, it's not reasonable to believe that they're limited to your followers. If you wanted that, you could change your settings.
posted by Sangermaine at 9:58 AM on September 4, 2015 [6 favorites]


Even with the examples in this thread, and especially the original comic, it seems like an underhanded trick that lets you shut down any criticism of what you're saying, and in addition offers you a convenient way of ridiculing anyone who questions you.

The questioner can take the criticism to their own blog, tumblr, facebook, whatever. But there's no ridicule involved, only a refusal to create a bespoke lit review of material that often already exists on the site and can be found using simple search terms. And, in fact, a well written rebuttal on one's own blog is often a better use of time and stronger criticism than engagement in a quasi-Socratic questioning in comment boxes.

But, since you've shifted the terms from requests for evidence to criticism, then we're no longer in the realm of open and good-faith requests for clarification.

This is another reason the original comic is bad. In real life it would indeed be odd for a stranger to walk over and join a private conversation. On the Internet, unless you're in a private forum, your conversations aren't private. If you're posting in a public place, it's a public conversation, and you can't pretend surprise when someone else joins in.

While online conversations are not necessarily private, they have both explicit rules and tacit norms. The norms for twitter are fairly loose, but the limitations of twitter make any kind of discussion of evidence almost impossible.

The norms for metafilter are to avoid double-posting, write in a moderately formal English, stay on topic, and don't derail advanced discussions into criticism of first principles. If you come to my personal blog, you can expect to be moderated according to my editorial opinions. If you don't like that, link me on your blog with your brilliant rebuttal.

Another factor is that engaging in online discussions is not necessarily a professional practice, and we might not have the time or energy to create bespoke lit reviews for every comment, post, link, or message that we might write. Not every act of writing/linking needs to be subjected to rigorous peer review and defense.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 9:59 AM on September 4, 2015 [8 favorites]


I want them to be public so someone who doesn't follow me can decide whether they would want to follow me.
posted by RobotHero at 9:59 AM on September 4, 2015 [4 favorites]


It's hard to argue that there's an expectation on a public web site open to all visitors that articles aren't for all visitors. Especially on something like Twitter.

It's not an argument that articles on public websites aren't open to all visitors, it's an argument that those visitors are not, in fact, entitled to issue an effectively endless barrage of questions and demands for an increasingly nebulous kind of "proof" whenever they stumble across a viewpoint with which they disagree. It's an argument that no one has a right to mercilessly interrogate someone for no reason other than they don't like the answers that person has provided or the opinions they hold. No matter what you say or do, unless or until you cede your position or get off the internet, a sealion is either going to try to drown you in tangential queries or shift the subject to a topic he finds more amenable to his own viewpoint before picking right back up where he left off.

Vociferously expressed entitlement to unlimited amounts of a stranger or acquaintance's attention, time, and effort is the crux of sealioning. It's not an invitation to dialogue or an attempt to provoke a thoughtful exchange of ideas, it's unilaterally foisting a pseudo-debate onto someone who doesn't know you from Adam and doesn't owe you shit. It's a silencing technique, and it has absolutely nothing to do with simply making a comment or asking a question in hopes of receiving an answer.
posted by divined by radio at 10:01 AM on September 4, 2015 [46 favorites]


If you're posting in a public place, it's a public conversation, and you can't pretend surprise when someone else joins in.

Sealioning isn't joining in, that's the whole point of it. It's a deliberate derail rather than an attempt to honestly participate.
posted by tofu_crouton at 10:01 AM on September 4, 2015 [15 favorites]


I want them to be public so someone who doesn't follow me can decide whether they would want to follow me.

But that doesn't jive with your previous comment.

You both want the public to be able to join if they want, but you claim you're only speaking to your followers? If you want the public to be able to decide to join in, then you're willing to accept the public joining in.
posted by Sangermaine at 10:01 AM on September 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


I want the public to lurk, then post.
posted by RobotHero at 10:03 AM on September 4, 2015 [6 favorites]


You don't get to functionally choose your audience in a publicly available medium. People who see and hear what you say and write will think they are entitled to respond to it. And while that's probably misguided in many cases, the distinction is academic because I don't think we've yet come up with a way to diminish entitlement or self-importance in the internet-going public at large. This is one of the first things I learned in j-school, and I credit my professors for being forward-thinking enough to consider that an important part of their curriculum back in 2006.

Thinking that one is entitled is a different thing from being entitled. The people who run the site can, in fact, choose who gets to respond, and I'm a huge advocate of the editorial banhammer, and even disemvoweling.

And no one is entitled to bespoke lit reviews on demand.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 10:03 AM on September 4, 2015 [4 favorites]


And for modes like twitter and facebook, I'm a big fan of muting and blocking.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 10:05 AM on September 4, 2015 [3 favorites]


If you're asking questions about basic 101 stuff that you would have got the answers to by just reading the posts I had already put out there on my own terms, I'm not going to answer your questions on your terms.
posted by RobotHero at 10:06 AM on September 4, 2015 [6 favorites]


The failing assumption is that anyone at all is participating in a 'debate' online about anything. Nobody is arguing in good faith, everyone is picking the set of evidence that agree with them, presenting them in the most flattering (and simplistic) light while conveniently ignoring anything that even smells like nuance or complexity.

I'll talk about touchy subjects in person only nowadays, the internet is actively harmful.
posted by Skorgu at 10:11 AM on September 4, 2015 [3 favorites]


If you're making public tweets no, it's not reasonable to believe that they're limited to your followers. If you wanted that, you could change your settings.

You don't get to decide what tweets are public or not, though. If you make your account private, all of your tweets become private. If you make your account public, all of your tweets become public, even those made while private.
posted by zombieflanders at 10:12 AM on September 4, 2015


Sangermaine - are you a Twitter user? Because you don't really seem to get how it works.
posted by Artw at 10:12 AM on September 4, 2015 [3 favorites]


So, people having a private conversation in a public place have a reasonable expectation of not having a third party randomly joining in, because that is rude and goes against social norms. But online, anything that anyone says in a public space is by nature available for everyone to comment on? And NOT engaging with every rando who happens by to hear you talk about feminism is the rude behavior now?
posted by chainsofreedom at 10:21 AM on September 4, 2015 [12 favorites]


If you've read any of Socrates' stuff,

....Plato's Socrates (who may be a somewhat fictionalized version of the real Socrates) was even worse.


Uhhh...he...he never wrote anything. All we have is Plato's account and, like, Aristophanes making fun of him
posted by Hoopo at 10:24 AM on September 4, 2015 [6 favorites]


There is a difference between "rights" and "courtesies." Any random person has the right to Tweet at me unless I block them (which I also have the right to do). But the question of courtesy comes up if someone is Tweeting at me to engage in a respectful discussion or if they are doing so to offer an unasked and manifestly off-topic or faux-clueless opinion or comment, either in hopes of disrupting a current conversation or just harassing me.

Or possibly because they are very ignorant of something and have decided to task me with teaching them instead of teaching themselves. Which is rude and very very often, sexist as hell (men who do this see women as teachers/mommies/ego-soothers who owe them attention and care). I am not their mommy, teacher or ego-soother and I refuse to play that role.

No one has a right to my time or attention (well, except my actual kid). I will choose who I spend those things on. That is my right.

The funny thing is that, though what I said sounds harsh, it isn't. To get me to talk to you, you only have to use a small amount of courtesy and display some ability to educate yourself and think for yourself. You must, in other words, treat me as an equal that you respect.

That so many people find this hard to do in discussions, particularly with women, is a sad commentary.
posted by emjaybee at 10:25 AM on September 4, 2015 [45 favorites]


It’s counterintuitive, but it turns out that listening is far more persuasive than speaking.

It is easy to fall into the habit of persuasion by argument. But arguing does not change minds — if anything, it makes people more intransigent. Silence is a greatly underestimated source of power. In silence, we can hear not only what is being said but also what is not being said. In silence, it can be easier to reach the truth.


If You Want People to Listen, Stop Talking
posted by chavenet at 10:29 AM on September 4, 2015 [3 favorites]


I had never heard of the term "sealioning", but it sounds similar to a technique often employed by Russian trolls on social media. Any statement unfavorable to the Kremlin is questioned and countered with demands for evidence or proof of every little detail. If the original commenter doesn't provide said proof to the satisfaction of the troll, he must therefore be lying. Any evidence that is provided is branded false or inaccurate anyway. And failing that, the troll moves on to whataboutism.
posted by Kabanos at 10:33 AM on September 4, 2015 [16 favorites]


Vociferously expressed entitlement to unlimited amounts of a stranger or acquaintance's attention, time, and effort is the crux of sealioning.

This really is the crux of the issue, yes. For any particular question a sealion might ask, that question, individually, is unproblematic. At any one instance in time, the sealion's treatment of the other is unproblematic. The problem is about how the sealion's features fit into a wider context. The problem is how the sealion's treatment of the other fails to take into consideration the other's needs and wants.

When you sealion, you pay no attention to what the other person wants out of the conversation. When you sealion, you refuse or ignore the well-being of the other. Sealioning is built from a failure to appreciate that answering questions takes hard work and effort, that responding to the same questions over and over again is exhausting, and that there might be other things one wants to do with one's conversation other than inform or argue with whomever may show up ready for a fight.

The sealion doesn't care about you. The sealion uses you. Rather than treat you as another human being with as much worth as any other human, who participates in conversations for the sake of mutual rather than one-sided benefit, the sealion uses you as a debate foil. The sealion's barrage of questions implies: "I don't care how you feel or what you want from your conversational activities. You must answer my questions, because they are mine, and I matter. Not you, no. You don't matter. I do. So, give me what I demand."
posted by meese at 10:45 AM on September 4, 2015 [5 favorites]


Generally they operate as a swarm rather than as individuals, and nobody has any social obligations to swarms because fuck swarms.
posted by Artw at 10:51 AM on September 4, 2015 [4 favorites]


I wonder how much of this phenomenon is a byproduct (intentional or no) of the (apparent) tension between: "The scales have fallen from my eyes! I will now take to the internets and educate the world about XYZ!" versus"I'm not here to educate you, this is 101-stuff. Educate yourself. STOP SEALIONING ME." I get that there are plenty of folks who ask questions in bad faith (on- and off-line), but if you hang out a shingle as "Now-Enlightened Individual out to Enlighten Others," you should probably be prepared for the fact that not everyone is going to share your baseline assumptions about, well, a lot of things. One (understandable) defensive response would be to accuse those who disagree with you of arguing in bad faith, of course. And while that's a comforting response, it strikes me as overly broad.

As a professional educator, I find the prevalence of these pedagogical assumptions/dynamics underlying certain aspects of internet discourse fascinating. Also, depressingly familiar. I've found it helpful to analyze my own intentions in posting things online and trying hard to be honest with myself: Are you out to educate others online? Are you seeking solidarity with similarly situated others? Are you cruising for validation from those who already largely agree with you? Are you reaching out to those who may disagree with your assumptions? etc.

And thanks to others, above, for making the point about a lack of primary Socratic texts. That claim was bothering me, but I've already used up my allotted pedantry for the day already :D
posted by Xavier Xavier at 10:58 AM on September 4, 2015 [6 favorites]


(already)
posted by Xavier Xavier at 10:58 AM on September 4, 2015


Are you cruising for validation from those who already largely agree with you?

*refreshes favorites count*
posted by Xavier Xavier at 11:09 AM on September 4, 2015 [11 favorites]


This is considered bad form? Seriously? If so, a large majority of MFites are sealions who spend most of their time here JAQing off.

And that's why the mods are so busy.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:17 AM on September 4, 2015 [3 favorites]


to be fair validation from people who already agree with you feels really, really, really good.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 11:22 AM on September 4, 2015 [4 favorites]


I though Socrates was kind of a dick even when reading his fanboy Plato's version, and when I got a bit older and read about him in general, I came to the conclusion that Athens had a pretty good case for executing him. He kept gathering up bunches of aristo boys and telling them that the peasants were worthless and needed a good kicking, and then his aristos repeatedly overthrew the government, established dictatorships, and killed thousands of people.
posted by tavella at 11:26 AM on September 4, 2015 [3 favorites]


Are you out to educate others online? Are you seeking solidarity with similarly situated others? Are you cruising for validation from those who already largely agree with you? Are you reaching out to those who may disagree with your assumptions? etc.

I think a lot of people who are victims of sealioning have a very good idea of what they're trying to do, and often they really aren't trying to educate the masses. I mean, sometimes they might be. But often times, they are just trying to have a conversation about something that matters to them, and they know it. The problem is that the sealion can't or won't understand that.

The sealion looks at any woman or POC or member of some other oppressed group and sees that person's very presence as evidence that that person owes them an explanation. The sealion often takes someone's mere existence as an invitation to attack, to debate, to demand answers. "What are you doing, writing about your experiences being black / a woman / gay / etc online, if you weren't willing to prove to me, right now, that racism / sexism / homophobia / etc exists as you presuppose it does?"

I suppose sealioning could occur in contexts that weren't directly focused on group identity or oppression/privilege--a lot of people above have extended the term to such contexts. Like, I know absolutely nothing about Magic: The Gathering, so if I went to an MtG discussion board and was all, "But why would you even play this? Aren't you all just getting het up over a bunch of stupid cards? Why is this something that matters?", I would be sealioning. I mean, I would have to do it a lot, because sealioning refers to a prolonged mode of interaction rather than a single question, etc. If I did that, I would clearly and obviously be acting like a total jerk. It would be immediately obvious that I was failing to appreciate conversational norms about why and how someone should interact with a MtG forum.

The difference is privilege means that the sealion isn't so readily obviously acting like a jerk. The sealion, speaking of a privileged perspective, thoroughly expects that their demands for information are appropriate in that context, because the sealion assumes that their own perspective is what determines what matters within any given context. And, given how society emphasizes the privileged perspective over others, most onlookers are also conditioned to expect the sealion's perspective to take precedence, too. Sealioning is so toxic because it is a particular form of assumption-questioning that takes place in a context where the one being questioned is expected to cater to the questioner, and where the questioner is assumed to be the one who gets to decide what questions are worth asking and when.

Of course, I'm putting myself in a precarious position, making this comment: by even just suggesting that privilege and oppression exist, I am setting myself up for any sealion who demands absolute proof that those things exist... because, again, the sealion is conditioned to trust their own viewpoint above others, and the privileged viewpoint isn't as able to recognize the existence of privilege and oppression. So, let me be clear: I'm not right now really interested in justifying the claims that privilege and oppression exist and that they affect an individual's epistemological status.
posted by meese at 11:28 AM on September 4, 2015 [42 favorites]


Socrates: Surely, it is the case, is it not, that the many and the one cannot be the same?
Glaucoma: Yes, that is true, Socrates.
Socrates: And then is it not true also that the one and the many are likewise not the same?
Glaucoma: Undoubtedly so, Socrates.
...
Socrates: Therefore, Glaucoma, I propose to demonstrate, in the course of several more days of this dialogue, that the one and the many are different.
Glaucoma: Anybody here got any hemlock?

(From Culture Made Stupid - I can't claim credit for this.)
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 11:29 AM on September 4, 2015 [6 favorites]


Socrates also never ran after people demanding that they answer his questions, or making death and rape threats against those who refused.

If a conversation is happening in public, of course you're entitled to respond. What you're not entitled to, however, is a response in turn. Not even if the people having the conversation are women.
posted by KathrynT at 11:30 AM on September 4, 2015 [31 favorites]


Oh, no, no, no, you are the sealion that stole my fish at the pier yesterday. Steal my fish once, *sigh*. Steal my fish twice nah. When the sealion chimes in here, let five or six other replies pile up, let the sealion croak again, then some one else answer with a question. Make it a real juggernaut of needy croaking.
posted by Oyéah at 11:30 AM on September 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


Skorgu: I'll talk about touchy subjects in person only nowadays, the internet is actively harmful.

Sounds like you and Socrates both, what with him refusing to write anything down.
posted by clawsoon at 11:37 AM on September 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


I had never heard of the term "sealioning", but it sounds similar to a technique often employed by Russian trolls on social media. Any statement unfavorable to the Kremlin is questioned and countered with demands for evidence or proof of every little detail.

Scientologists too. Down to demanding definitions for common words, because that's part of their "tech".
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 11:38 AM on September 4, 2015 [2 favorites]


Here's a bad faith question: Is sealioning okay if you do it to Freepers?
posted by clawsoon at 11:45 AM on September 4, 2015


I got the Scientologists to leave me alone with their own methods. Dianetics says that when you find a word you don't understand in a book, you should immediately stop reading and get a definition for it--because missing a word is the only reason you don't understand what a book is trying to say. (Just set aside that part of the claim for now.)

I tried to read Dianetics. End of chapter 5, there's this line:

The worth of an individual is computed in terms of the alignment, on any dynamic, of his potential value with optimum survival along that dynamic.

Italics in original. That made no sense to me, even though "potential value" and "dynamic" had both been previously defined, so I stopped. And the next time the Scientologists pestered me about joining, I asked them to explain it to me.

They stopped asking.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 11:57 AM on September 4, 2015 [6 favorites]


This is a pretty confused thread. I'm not at all sure that the linked article is discussing the same thing that David Malki is depicting in the Wondermark strip. It also provides absolutely no examples, either in reality or constructed for illustrative purposes. I'm also pretty sure that a sizable fraction of the comments in this read are describing some third thing that isn't quite either of them.
posted by George_Spiggott at 12:02 PM on September 4, 2015 [7 favorites]


I'm just here because I'm hoping that someone who's actually read Xenophon will come in with some insight on Socrates-without-Plato.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 12:05 PM on September 4, 2015


I get that there are plenty of folks who ask questions in bad faith (on- and off-line), but if you hang out a shingle as "Now-Enlightened Individual out to Enlighten Others," you should probably be prepared for the fact that not everyone is going to share your baseline assumptions about, well, a lot of things.

Honestly? This only kicks in regarding things that are regarded as politically controversial. I don't fish. I'm morally and religiously opposed to participating in fishing for myself (I don't care what others do). I don't understand fishing.

So why the hell would I be reading a site dedicated to fishing, much less demanding that the ethics, aesthetics, and techniques of fishing be explained for my benefit? Why football? Why Macintosh computers? Why art produced by Mrs. Smith's grandchildren? Why hedgehogs? Why books written by people whose name ends in the letter "y"?

Why English Handbell church choirs? Now there's a topic I actually do have a strong (negative) opinion on. Why the hell should I waste my time demanding that English Handbell choirs provide evidence to justify their tinnitus-inducing liturgical existence? Why should they waste their prove themselves to me?

Most of the internet is wonderfully specialized, and we rarely see demands that content creators do much more than provide a faq (if that).

I had to give up on tumblr earlier this year because the stress of defining bisexuality and biphobia there became a game of weekly whack-a-mole. And as John Stewart said, "I'm not your monkey." The exact same questions were answered earlier that month. It's there in the tag cloud. There's no reason for me address other people's denial on their schedule.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 12:06 PM on September 4, 2015 [5 favorites]


The practical way to deal with sea lioning is to remember at all times that you are not just engaging with that one single person, but with your entire audience (whoever that might be).

So if it is useful **to your entire audience**, and worthwhile (from that perspective) according to your own personal cost/benefit ratio for time spent, to explain, elucidate, provide some further evidence or reading, consider some edge cases, continue the discussion, or whatever, then go ahead and spend some time doing so.

As soon as it is not about and for the benefit of the entire audience however, as soon as it becomes just a tit-for-tat with that one single person, then immediately stop.

That's not a universal law or anything, but just my own personal perspective on dealing with this type of questioning over the years. Up to a point, it can be useful, even if you know darn good and well that the questions are being asked in bad faith. It's useful because you are giving the answer to other people who might genuinely have that question, not just the one bad-faith questioner. Beyond that point however, just stop engaging.

This goes for online forums, political debates, public and private conversations, classroom discussions, and a lot more.
posted by flug at 12:11 PM on September 4, 2015 [7 favorites]


The thing is, you can't just say "Well, the social standards for Twitter are such-and-so." As discussions about sealioning, block lists and brigades demonstrate, we as a culture are in the process of working out what the social conventions for this relatively recent technology should be. The standards can and will change.

Simply saying "Well, anything you can do with Twitter is okay, because if it wasn't okay, you wouldn't be able to do it" flies in the face of human nature and cultural history. There will always be a gap between "possible" and "acceptable." Is it acceptable to search Twitter for key phrases and ask anyone who disagrees with you on certain points to engage in a discussion of same? Is it acceptable to politely or silently refuse to engage? That's what we're working out as a culture.
posted by lore at 12:13 PM on September 4, 2015 [8 favorites]


"Why do you ask that question?"

Socrates meets Carl Rogers. Conversation goes into extra innings.
posted by jfuller at 12:26 PM on September 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


Socrates meets Carl Rogers.

SocratesBot vs. Eliza?
posted by clawsoon at 12:32 PM on September 4, 2015


Socrates: Surely, it is the case, is it not, that the many and the one cannot be the same?
Zippy: What size washer do you like to put your clothes in?
posted by pyramid termite at 1:07 PM on September 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


RobotHero: "Sangermaine: "It's hard to argue that there's an expectation on a public web site open to all visitors that articles aren't for all visitors. Especially on something like Twitter."

I don't think it is that hard at all to argue that my posts on Twitter are for my followers.
"


Sangermaine: "You both want the public to be able to join if they want, but you claim you're only speaking to your followers? If you want the public to be able to decide to join in, then you're willing to accept the public joining in."


Upon further thought, my mistake here was to try to put it in the same framework you were using, that something either is or is not for *people* without any context for how they are using them.

If I put out "missing cat" posters with my phone number on them, it would be rude to phone me up to tell me how much better dogs are than cats. That number is available to anyone who sees the poster, but there's an implicit rule that you should only phone me for the purpose of helping me find my cat.

So it's not necessarily a contradiction to be fine with anyone reading my public posts while being more restrictive in who I'm going to discuss my posts with.
posted by RobotHero at 1:14 PM on September 4, 2015 [24 favorites]


I was reading an early Eighties Andrea Dworkin speech to a men's group recently:
Why are you so slow to understand the simplest things; not the complicated ideological things. You understand those. The simple things. The cliches. Simply that women are human to precisely the degree and quality that you are.

And also: that we do not have time. We women. We don't have forever. Some of us don't have another week or another day to take time for you to discuss whatever it is that will enable you to go out into those streets and do something...
posted by TheophileEscargot at 1:21 PM on September 4, 2015 [11 favorites]


responding to it is a complete waste of time.

Such a waste of time. As opposed to what normally happens when you reply to comments on the Internet, which is that everyone takes care to read and carefully consider what message you are trying to convey, generously overlooks any deficiencies in its presentation, reconsiders their own views in light of it, and crafts a thoughtful response which leaves everyone involved feeling better about humanity and their own place in the world, having that much more valuable insight into perspectives on life that differ in unexpected ways from their own.
posted by sfenders at 1:24 PM on September 4, 2015 [3 favorites]


It seems that the consensus here is that Socrates, even just as portrayed by Plato, is essentially on the same level as the average basement troll. This would seem to bear out the accuracy of Plato's parable of the cave.
posted by No Robots at 1:35 PM on September 4, 2015 [3 favorites]


I am confused by all this talk about reading Socrates. Socrates barely wrote anything, and what little he did write was lost long ago. He wasn't a huge fan of this newfangled writing thing - he preferred speech for its deeper nuance and greater persuasive power. The Socratic Dialogues were written by Plato and Xenophon, both students of Socrates.
posted by foobaz at 1:36 PM on September 4, 2015


I am confused by all this talk about reading Socrates.

Please phrase your objection in the form of a question.

E.g.: Why are you bringing that up, since only two people talked about reading Socrates, and the thrust of your objection to those people has already been raised multiple times?
posted by clawsoon at 1:41 PM on September 4, 2015 [3 favorites]


I find it kind of disturbing that so many people here are trying to justify the practice.

Not disturbing to me - the justifications are predictable and boring.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 1:41 PM on September 4, 2015 [3 favorites]


Reasonable people prefer Diogenes to Socrates anyway.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 1:57 PM on September 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


I am confused by all this talk about reading Socrates. Socrates barely wrote anything, and what little he did write was lost long ago. He wasn't a huge fan of this newfangled writing thing - he preferred speech for its deeper nuance and greater persuasive power. The Socratic Dialogues were written by Plato and Xenophon, both students of Socrates.

Good lord -okay, if everyone collectively agrees to acknowledge that Socrates was not the one that literally held the pen when the Socratic Dialogues were written, can we all just drop this tangent and take it as understood that when people are talking about Socrates in this conversational context, they are referring to the SOCRATIC METHOD ITSELF and not the actual literal human man?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:57 PM on September 4, 2015 [9 favorites]


The sealion likes to think he is interrupting a "circlejerk" or "groupthink" and challenging something that has gone unchallenged. "Excuse me, but have you considered the possibility that the Emperor is wearing no clothes?"

It's happening right here. There are a bunch of people who have been subjected to the same tiresome disingenuous "questions" over and over, so often that they finally coined a name for it, and sure enough, a bunch of people barge in, ignore their experience, and condescendingly ask, "Did it occur to you that some questions are asked in good faith?"

Well, duh. They wouldn't have bothered to coin the name "sealion" if they hadn't wasted so much time assuming questions are asked in good faith, answering them, and getting burned by jerks who actually had no interest in the answers.
posted by straight at 1:59 PM on September 4, 2015 [46 favorites]


I don't think people who question-bomb are necessarily insincere (sometimes they are of course) but it doesn't matter that much because it's just not feasible for someone who is writing for public consumption to engage every single reader in a one-on-one debate or from-scratch tutoring session. So acting as if you've scored a devastating blow just because someone let your personal objection go unanswered is really obnoxious and inconsiderate of their time investment.
posted by atoxyl at 2:02 PM on September 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


RobotHero: "So it's not necessarily a contradiction to be fine with anyone reading my public posts while being more restrictive in who I'm going to discuss my posts with."

Or not even *who* I'm going to discuss my posts with, but what conditions I expect for that discussion. With the lost cat analogy, the implied condition is you phone me if you've found my cat.

The conditions the sealions are violating are a little trickier to pin down, but you can't straight out say, "Since this post is publicly visible on Twitter, there are no implied conditions on how someone should respond to it."
posted by RobotHero at 2:05 PM on September 4, 2015


Well just also consider that someone who writes for public consumption and gets a lot of feedback might have a lot more experience learning to recognize which questions are sincere attempts at conversation and which are sealions, that what seems dangerously murky to you might be blindingly obvious to someone else with more experience of this stuff than you have.
posted by straight at 2:06 PM on September 4, 2015 [2 favorites]


I'm still gun-shy from the time I was accused of sealioning on a thread here, it sucks but I've stopped myself from commenting several times because of it. Not worth it. It does seem a little circle-jerky sometimes.
posted by Hazelsmrf at 2:11 PM on September 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


EmpressCallipygos: Okay but see the racists would be the sea lions today...

Agreed. I'd sum up my view something like this: a) It's an irritating tactic no matter who does it, whether it's Socrates, civil rights workers, sea lions, racists, birthers, or MRAs. Irritating enough to get you killed, beaten, or told to go back to Sea World. It doesn't matter whether the person doing it is a saint. It doesn't matter if they're right, or if justice is on their side. It's still irritating. b) Actually convincing someone to change their mind requires something much more difficult: A sincere willingness to have your mind changed by them, too.

And no, I don't know how to completely integrate those two views.

And just like you're doing now.

Could be. And what's wrong with that?

[Kidding. KIDDING!!]
posted by clawsoon at 2:14 PM on September 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


It seems that the consensus here is that Socrates, even just as portrayed by Plato, is essentially on the same level as the average basement troll.

Not really. This is a bit of a derail now, but whatever. First impressions of Socrates for me were "wow this guy is really annoying and I would probably have walked away from this discussion ages ago. He is arguing in bad faith and some of this is pretty weak." But by the time you get to Phaedo you sorta feel bad that he's going to get persecuted for it. but here's a big difference: Socrates is all "yeah OK, I chose to live here and knew the deal with the rules and the laws and stuff so I guess I better crush this hemlock now, eh bros?" Whereas the average troll has no actual principles at all and is just there to piss you off and run away laughing. The troll thinks there are no rules and knows there's no consequences.
posted by Hoopo at 2:16 PM on September 4, 2015 [2 favorites]


okay but people people we're missing a perfect opportunity to talk about Diogenes in terms of Internet trolling.

The man masturbated in the Athenian marketplace. And justified his actions by saying that if he could sate his hunger by rubbing his stomach, he'd do that in the marketplace too.

He lived in a large jar in the forum. he was all like "lol I don't need your stupid houses stupid Athenians. houses are for poseurs. I'll be over here. in a jar. comfy jar. Right here in the forum."

He told Alexander the great — Alexander the Great! — "lol go away you're blocking my sunlight."

Socrates was at best the second-best Athenian troll. If you're looking for true excellence in trolling, you're looking for Diogenes.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 2:23 PM on September 4, 2015 [32 favorites]


Sometime earlier this year I read a Stoic analysis of this very question. If you don't believe that writing a response will have any efficacy, you shouldn't write it.

This topic is interesting because elsewhere today I posted about Octavia Butler's Dawn getting optioned by a producer for TV rights. And one of the responses that came up today as this discussion is going on is, "There is a huge library of really excellent science fiction that goes unnoticed and they option this?"

The question marginally interests me because I'm reading the trilogy back to back, and probably will have at least a thousand words to write about it once I'm done. But, am I really obligated to cough up a chunk of those words unprepared to answer this question when it's addressed by the linked article? The idea that we can educate or persuade someone within the bounds of a comment box in a single afternoon is ridiculously optimistic. A better strategy is to throw out the breadcrumbs and let the person follow on their own time.

An example of sealioning that I've encountered looks something like this: "Why do you use the word 'bisexual' when the etymology...?" This is an earnest answer that took an entire evening to write. (self-link) I've written at least a hundred variations on that over the last two years into various comment boxes.

Probably 3/4ths of the time, the person I'm responding to gives me the exact same question phrased in a different way. And at that point, I can continue to get dangerously pissed off, or I can just write off the entire encounter.

Or I can just pick and choose the questions I want to answer.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 2:30 PM on September 4, 2015 [4 favorites]


I've never used Twitter, but it's starting to sound like a place where hundreds of people who think they're Socrates are constantly waiting for their chance to descend en masse.
posted by clawsoon at 2:42 PM on September 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


I've never used Twitter, but it's starting to sound like a place where hundreds of people who think they're Socrates are constantly waiting for their chance to descend en masse.

That is pretty accurate. Except they are also angry entitled misogynists. (I guess Socrates was one too, but not nearly as angry.)
posted by vogon_poet at 2:46 PM on September 4, 2015 [6 favorites]


> But, am I really obligated to cough up a chunk of those words unprepared to answer this question when it's addressed by the linked article?

I got into a...discussion, I guess? with someone here a year or so ago who flat-out said I have questions for you, do you really want me to go do the reading you linked to before I ask them? My questions might be offensive but I am just asking out of human curiosity! they said.

At least they were obvious about the idiotic sealioning/trolling.
posted by rtha at 3:11 PM on September 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


There’s one point I’d like to make, and I’m sorry if I missed it in this very long thread:

Some people have suggested that sealioning is bad-faith questioning, as though the sealion knows he won’t change his target’s opinion and is just seeking to waste her time. I don’t think this is quite true — the sealion mainly wants to humiliate his target, but is trying to do so with questions that represent his honestly held beliefs.

The sealion’s dreamed-of outcome is demonstrating to the imagined crowd of bystanders that he is the smart one and she’s just being irrational. There was an awesome tweet a while back (which I can’t find now) about the gamergator’s weaponization of “male logic” against women — that’s what sealioning is to me. It’s an taunting invitation to a public “battle of wits” across the world’s worst medium for true debate.

Hence I don’t think that a sealion is being a bad-faith gadfly anymore than I believe that Duane Gish is saying things he believes to be false. Gish thinks he’s right; he’s just adopted an annoying tactic which he perceives to be the best illustration of his “correctness.” Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.

For one to stop being a sealion requires a sort of epiphany that gamergate-style dynamics are incapable of delivering. It demands that one grow tired of the intellectual peacocking and, instead, want to understand where his opponent is coming from. Most of the conversations I’ve read with ex-gators (and other ex-harassers of women) suggest that they reformed their ways when they realized, deeper than on a mere intellectual level, that they were dealing with human beings and not digital phantoms.
posted by savetheclocktower at 3:30 PM on September 4, 2015 [13 favorites]


savetheclocktower, what you've described is exactly what is meant by "asking questions in bad faith." Sealions aren't asking for information, they are passive-aggressively throwing down a debate gauntlet, and when people see through their game and decline their pointless twitter debate, they retreat to whining, "But I was just asking a question! Why won't you just answer my question?"
posted by straight at 3:54 PM on September 4, 2015 [3 favorites]


I'm still gun-shy from the time I was accused of sealioning on a thread here

Ah yeah, I saw that one. Welcome to the world of marine mammals. The sea lions try to start Socratic dialogues but don't have the wit to go anywhere with them. The seals have been disturbed by a couple of sea lions recently and now think that anything that doesn't bark exactly like a seal must be one of them. The walrus can tell you the price of ceiling wax in Istanbul but will never understand what "mansplaining" means. Manatee feel threatened by your attempts to improve the world and would DDoS you if they knew how. Minke whales do know how but are after larger prey. Most of the narwhal you'll see are undercover sales agents for some product or ideology trying to look cool and genuine and failing miserably at it. Beluga just want you to like them. Right whales are certain that the crowd has decided and this is how right-thinking people do it now. Beaked whales assume you're the enemy unless you begin everything with acknowledging how right they are. Otters look cute, but watch out for their sarcasm which can be deadly. Social Justice Kraken have thousands of tentacles with sock puppets at the end of each, but I'm pretty sure they're just a myth.
posted by sfenders at 3:55 PM on September 4, 2015 [9 favorites]


Otters look cute, but watch out for their sarcasm which can be deadly.

Sure is nice of you to make people feel welcome. It's great to see how friendly the big blue website is these days.
posted by The otter lady at 4:25 PM on September 4, 2015 [16 favorites]


*flees in terror*
posted by sfenders at 4:45 PM on September 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


That's a brave sea lion, if you ask me.

Yeah, it's funny that the sea lion strip is a really poor example of "sea lioning". The humans are like, "sea lions suck" for absolutely no reason, and then the sea lion shows up and will not let it go while never failing to be civil about it. I find the creature's persistence kind of endearing, in a silly way. I could have just as easily seen this strip getting meme-ified by folks who saw it a jokey tale of somebody from an underrepresented group refusing to accept unprovoked, insulting crap. ("I could do without the gays..." "Told you, dude. Gays.")

We all want to challenge people online when they say something stupid or prejudiced... but we sure don't want to be challenged by people who say that we've said something stupid or prejudiced. If we demand they supply evidence, that's perfectly reasonable. If they demand evidence they're just being pricks and trying to derail the conversation.

It's not that the phenomenon known as "sea lioning" doesn't exist, or isn't annoying as hell. But you've probably been somebody else's sea lion, more than once. You'll probably be one again.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 5:26 PM on September 4, 2015 [9 favorites]


Socrates got sentenced to death for sealioning.

This made me guffaw with its surprising truth.

The negative consequences of giving yourself permission to ignore reasonable questions outweigh the positive consequences of giving yourself permission to ignore questions that you think or suspect are only pretending to be reasonable.
posted by Sebmojo at 5:42 PM on September 4, 2015


Sealioning is the act of addressing people who are more-or-less strangers and trying to structure that discursive interaction in a very rigid way, but doing so while giving the appearance of being reasonable by using civil (in a sense, overly-refined) language in the process. It's an aggressive act, and it positions the question-asker as an arbiter of truth even though they're just some person on the internet.

It's totally different from the Socratic method. The Socratic method is a pedagogical technique, not a conversational style, and it's intended to help students understand and reason more clearly. It's not a reasonable way to interact with ostensible social peers in a generic social context.


This is not correct at all; you've just described the same thing with a positive and a negative slant.
posted by Sebmojo at 6:47 PM on September 4, 2015 [2 favorites]


straight: "savetheclocktower, what you've described is exactly what is meant by "asking questions in bad faith.""

Yeah, I should’ve been clearer. “Asking questions in bad faith” is a phrase that applies to what I described, but other commenters were going further and suggesting that the purpose of the questions was to waste the target’s time. That’s the part I disagree with.
posted by savetheclocktower at 6:57 PM on September 4, 2015


Ursula Hitler: If we demand they supply evidence, that's perfectly reasonable. If they demand evidence they're just being pricks and trying to derail the conversation.

We can make inferences about whether a request for evidence is reasonable just as we can make inferences about that deal that dropped into our mailbox that sounds too good to be true. Some heuristics:

1. Is the asker willing to take "no" for an answer? The act of asking a question does not obligate a response.
2. Is the same question asked repeatedly in the hopes of getting a more agreeable answer? There's a legal phrase for this, "asked and answered."
3. Is the evidence provided rejected on superficial grounds?
4. Is the asker unwilling to accept an "agree to disagree" in an informal conversation?
5. Is the question off-topic?

Sebmojo: The negative consequences of giving yourself permission to ignore reasonable questions outweigh the positive consequences of giving yourself permission to ignore questions that you think or suspect are only pretending to be reasonable.

If you're not business or family, you're not entitled to a response.

It's a truth of the internet that's probably a good idea to learn.

This is not correct at all; you've just described the same thing with a positive and a negative slant.

You mean, aside from the fact that casual conversation and philosophy pedagogy are two fundamentally different methods of constructing knowledge and rhetoric?
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 6:58 PM on September 4, 2015 [7 favorites]


Oh and:

6. Is the evidence demanded even applicable to conversation? No, a therapy discussion for rape survivors is not the place to ask for statistics regarding prevalence or prevention.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 7:03 PM on September 4, 2015 [5 favorites]


We can make inferences about whether a request for evidence is reasonable just as we can make inferences about that deal that dropped into our mailbox that sounds too good to be true.

I wasn't citing any specific argument, and I did say that "sea lioning" can be an actual thing. There are certainly people who do all of the obnoxious things you describe. But there is a real gray area with this stuff, especially when reasonable people get angry and become less reasonable. People want to make fun of those sea lion jerks over there, and my point was that you might want to have a look in the mirror and see if you've got flippers and a lustrous golden-brown pelt yourself.

The act of asking a question does not obligate a response.

Well, if you've said something grievously hurtful to somebody and they question you about it, I suppose you can say you're not obligated to respond but then you should cop to (potentially) being kind of a callous asshole. This stuff isn't simple. There are times when you can say something and you know it's right and damn the haters. There are times when people will hit you with a lot of bullshit statistics and flowery rhetoric as a kind of fancy-ass trolling. But I think we've all been on both sides of an argument where we are either demanding somebody back up the shit they were saying with facts, or we were ready to throttle somebody for being a big PC blowhard and trying to take over the conversation like Wikipedia editors, demanding that we cite our sources.

In any case, the sea lion in the comic strip doesn't do any of the things you cite, unless it's off-panel. The humans simply refuse to acknowledge any of its questions at all, and the sea lion goes to humorously drastic lengths in an attempt to engage with them. I think people (and possibly the artist, I don't know) are taking the wrong lesson from the strip. That sea lion has every right to be offended, and the humans are just responding with that smug human entitlement that sea lions have had to cope with for so long.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 7:22 PM on September 4, 2015 [2 favorites]


The negative consequences of giving yourself permission to ignore reasonable questions outweigh the positive consequences of giving yourself permission to ignore questions that you think or suspect are only pretending to be reasonable.

I don't think you can make that determination without knowing the ratio of reasonable to unreasonable questions a given person is subjected to (as well as the total number of questions).
posted by straight at 7:49 PM on September 4, 2015


flippers and a lustrous golden-brown pelt

As annoyed as I am by analogies, this one is unusually instructive. You are apparently unable to identify a sea lion, and your proposed identification strategy is highly prone to give false positives. People who know what they are talking about will look for external ear flaps, dolichocephaly, and rotating rear flippers.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:51 PM on September 4, 2015 [2 favorites]


Okay, the misreadings of the comic bugged me, so here you go, have a transcript.

Frame 1, two people in carriage:
Person A, female: I don't mind most marine mammals. But SEA LIONS? I could do without sea lions.
Person B, male: Don't say that out loud!

Frame 2:
Sealion, suddenly on back of carriage: Pardon me, I couldn't help but overhear...
Person B, male: NOW you've done it.

Frame 3:
Sealion, uncomfortably close to person A, female: I would like to have a civil conversation about your statement.
Sealion: Would you mind showing me evidence of any negative thing any sea lion has ever done to you?

Frame 4:
Persons A and B are a table in what looks like a house.
Person A, female: GO AWAY
Sealion: There's no need to raise your voice, I'm right here.
Sealion: I'm just curious if you have any sources to back up your opinion?

Frame 5:
Person A, alone in her bed: You're IN my HOUSE
Sealion: You made a statement in public for all to hear. Are you unable to defend the statements you make? Or simply unwilling to have a reasoned discussion?

Frame 6:
Persons A and B presumably in a house (the same house?).
Person B, male: TOLD you, dude. SEA LIONS.
Sealion: I have been unfailingly polite, and YOU two have been nothing but RUDE.
Person A, female: I AM TRYING TO EAT BREAKFAST
Sealion: Very well. We shall resume in an hour

So to recap: the sealion aggressively invades personal space while asking if there is any negative thing sea lions have done (LIKE INVADE HER PERSONAL SPACE RIGHT THEN AND MAKE IT SO SHE CAN'T LEAVE IN THE CARRIAGE, HELLO???) follows them to their (her?) house and refuses to leave as though they have a right to BE THERE IN HER HOUSE UNINVITED(!!!), persists in bothering/stalking her while she's IN BED SLEEPING, ALONE, OMFG, and persists in talking to her WHILE SHE'S EATING BREAKFAST IN HER HOUSE (did the sealion ever LEAVE? did the sealion let her get ANY SLEEP???) and person B, the guy, does nothing but blame her and does nothing to ward off the sea lion who is stalking and trespassing on Person A, who is presumably (supposedly??) Person's B FRIEND, and the sealion's response to Person A's extremely understandable request to GTFO WHILE SHE'S EATING, she's not even asking the sealion to leave anymore, she just wants to EAT IN PEACE, is that she's just asking for a ~concession~ that the sealion will deign to temporarily grant.

I personally think the comic illustrates a number of conversational dynamics with sealions quite wonderfully and this thread has been similarly illustrative but not in a good way.
posted by E. Whitehall at 7:55 PM on September 4, 2015 [21 favorites]


ctrl+f terrible sea lion (from the comic strip author)
It has been suggested that the couple in this comic, and the woman in particular, are bigots for making a pejorative statement about a species of animal, and then refusing to justify their statements. ...in satire such as this, elements are employed to stand in for other, different objects or concepts.

...The sea lion character is not meant to represent actual sea lions, or any actual animal. It is meant as a metaphorical stand-in for human beings that display certain behaviors. Since behaviors are the result of choice, I would assert that the woman’s objection to sea lions — which, if the metaphor is understood, is read as actually an objection to human beings who exhibit certain behaviors — is not analogous to a prejudice based on race, species, or other immutable characteristics.
note also that dude is in her fucking bedroom. endearing, humorous? try creepy as fuck.

you've taken the wrong lesson from the strip. the sea lion, by definition, is what the sea lion does. if he didn't barge in like they knew he would, he would not be a sea lion.

"god i hate the type of person that harasses you through twitter by acting all polite and forcing you to do 101 shit when they clearly are just into debate club and have zero respect for how much time you're taking to talk to them about issues that affect you directly and are not a matter of point-scoring hilarity" is not a racial slur.
posted by twist my arm at 8:00 PM on September 4, 2015 [3 favorites]


If it walks like a sealion etc. People coming at me in bad faith are welcome to think I'm "a callous asshole" for not responding when asked, if ever.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 8:00 PM on September 4, 2015 [3 favorites]


That sea lion has every right to be offended, and the humans are just responding with that smug human entitlement that sea lions have had to cope with for so long.

it seems that smug humans are indeed a robust cause of sea lion decline, from direct hunting and food competition, to climate change and plastic waste. perhaps another metaphor would be less confusing.

thanks for all of the debate and legal terms, those posts have been educational.
posted by eustatic at 8:01 PM on September 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


Ursula Hitler: Well, if you've said something grievously hurtful to somebody and they question you about it, I suppose you can say you're not obligated to respond but then you should cop to (potentially) being kind of a callous asshole.

Sometimes the best approach is to just walk away. Disengaging from drama is almost never a bad thing. Bad apologies are often worse than nothing in internet discourse, and I say that from experience on both sides. So I'm not going to say categorically that every discussion must reach some stage of closure and if you don't create that closure you are an asshole. Especially with the way callout culture is going, that closure may not even be possible.

And to be completely honest, I'm an expert in only one field, and know only a fraction of the research that's going on in it. I obsessively collect news articles about bisexual health and discrimination. Outside of those two areas, I'm rarely more than a casual layman making "petite knowledge" claims grounded in my hum-drum layman's experience.

Often demands for evidence are something of a rhetorical one-upmanship. "Oh, you haven't read ___. You must not be all that serious." Sometimes that's justified, frequently it's not. I'm trying to wean myself out of it.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 8:08 PM on September 4, 2015 [3 favorites]


Sometimes the best approach is to just walk away. Disengaging from drama is almost never a bad thing. Bad apologies are often worse than nothing in internet discourse, and I say that from experience on both sides.

I liked UH's comments and I liked this response to them. Thanks for an interesting thread, folks.
posted by Drinky Die at 8:33 PM on September 4, 2015


endearing, humorous? try creepy as fuck.

If you take the events of this comic literally. I suppose the Kool Aid man also deserves to be locked away for a long time for all the property damage he's caused and the lives he's shattered by busting into the homes of unsuspecting citizens and hollering OH YEAH!!

If this comic depicted a human member of some marginalized group, I'm pretty certain that many of the people citing it as example of asshole behavior would say the character was their new hero and they would see the character's relentlessness as humorous exaggeration. If this was about Greta the paraplegic punk rock POC, behaving exactly the same way when some able-bodied, white person declared that she could gladly "do without" people like Greta, people would probably be putting Greta on t-shirts.

You are apparently unable to identify a sea lion

Should I assume you're trying to "sea lion" at me for humorous effect? Because sea lions do have flippers and golden-brown pelts. There, now I have sea lioned back at you. Bark, bark!

Anyway, my point in these discussions is usually that people should try to be nicer and more empathetic to each other and stop trying to score points with snarky, tired ass memes. That's what I was going for, and I don't feel like I'm being cruelly dismissive if I say that I meant no harm and I'd prefer not to spend any more of my weekend arguing about this.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 9:09 PM on September 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


The sea lion is drawn occupying a disproportionate amount of space in the frame, inserting itself between characters and into the foreground, basically stalking people - oh, and spouting internet argument cliches. It's... not all that subtle or ambiguous. Yeah, you could draw a comic in which the sea lion was the sympathetic character if you did it completely differently.
posted by atoxyl at 9:46 PM on September 4, 2015 [3 favorites]


You're quite right. Satirical comedy created by and largely for the entertainment of a marginalized group would never go over the top for the purposes of satire. They would certainly never be in your face, didactic or violent and if they were they surely wouldn't be popular.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 10:47 PM on September 4, 2015


Ugh. I posted that last comment and it doesn't feel right. I fell prey to the very thing I was criticizing before, getting snarky and trying to score points. Metafilter isn't supposed to be a freaking shooting match.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 12:36 AM on September 5, 2015 [4 favorites]


Sea lion nuggets are pretty good, but they can't hold a candle to dugong patties.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 1:37 AM on September 5, 2015


The walrus can tell you the price of ceiling wax in Istanbul but will never understand what "mansplaining" means.

#notallwalruses
posted by walrus at 4:09 AM on September 5, 2015 [6 favorites]


Should I assume you're trying to "sea lion" at me for humorous effect? Because sea lions do have flippers and golden-brown pelts. There, now I have sea lioned back at you. Bark, bark!

Neither of these things is sealioning. This is why I'm a little dubious to the whole "but really, sealioning is a matter of perspective, and haven't we all been someone's sea lion" thing. Sealioning is a deliberate and sustained form of harassment. I'd say it's vanishingly close to unlikely that anyone is asking a firehose of questions while dismissing the answers, demanding proof rather than evidence and demanding a response or responses, obtusely spocking their way through the clearest explanations, latching onto and wearing down someone who clearly does not want to entertain this harassment - all accidentally. Point-scoring and internet gotchas, while less than nice, are a bit different. I agree that it'd be great for all of us to try better to remember there are actual human beings on the other side of the screen, but sometimes a "tired ass meme" is actually a helpful way of identifying a set of persistent behaviors of harassment that the harasser is able to get away with because they prey upon the good faith of others to entertain them through the surface appearance of civility i.e. civilly-posed questions. Being nicer cuts in a lot of different directions, and as CBrachyrhynchos points out, sometimes the "nicest" thing you can do is disengage and walk away.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 4:16 AM on September 5, 2015 [10 favorites]


I liked UH's comments and I liked this response to them. Thanks for an interesting thread, folks.

Yeah, it's been a good discussion.

You mean, aside from the fact that casual conversation and philosophy pedagogy are two fundamentally different methods of constructing knowledge and rhetoric?

Sealioning isn't casual conversation though. That's the point? As Ms Hitler points out, you can always walk away, just like Socrates' interlocutors could - they didn't, because they thought they were right, so why would they?
posted by Sebmojo at 4:24 AM on September 5, 2015


What is today called sea lioning seems to me to be a form of what was called "special pleading" in formal rhetoric. The specific tactics being taken may be sound and rational, but the overall strategy is disingenuous and an overwhelming geyser of bias.

It's basically the nicest fallacy for aiming back at the pests who learn a set of rhetorical fallacies and use them to bother people.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 4:28 AM on September 5, 2015


Neither of these things is sealioning.

I suppose not. I just wasn't getting why TMOTAT was giving me this kind of pedantic comment about the ways to recognize a sea lion, and I assumed it was some joke about the pedantic nature of sea lioning so I responded with some pedantry of my own. (And while we're all being pedantic at each other, isn't it a sea lion and not a sealion? Wikipedia has it as two words, but I'm seeing a whole lot of people here making it one word.)

Sealioning is a deliberate and sustained form of harassment.

I would agree that the behavior you're describing is obnoxious and I have encountered it myself. But I was saying that there can be a fine line between legitimately offended people calling you on your bullshit and what we call "sea lioning". I was also pointing out that the comic that inspired this meme is a poor example of "sea lioning" behavior because the people in the strip are just acting like dicks pretty much any way you look at it (in a world where sea lions are intelligent and can speak, opining that you could happily "do without" their entire species is a pretty nasty thing to say) and his unfailingly polite stalking makes him seem (to me) like a well-meaning creature who is way too determined to talk this shit out.

We don't see him ignoring the arguments of the humans while he just keeps talking at them and demanding more evidence. Instead we see the humans totally refusing to answer any of his questions at all. They said something really shitty about his species, and then they apparently don't even dignify his objections with a single answer. If this strip was about pretty much any group of unfairly marginalized humans, we would probably all be on that person's side. We would probably think it was funny and satisfying to see a POC politely harass a racist like this in a comic, or to see a person in a wheelchair showing up at some able-ist's breakfast table and insisting that they hash out the insulting remark from the previous day. Picture a Kids in the Hall sketch, with Buddy Love showing up in some guy's shower to grill him about a homophobic remark from the other day. It would be ridiculous, but Buddy would still have a point and he would not be depicted as the bad guy in that sketch!

Anyway, it's a silly little strip about a goddamned sea lion, and I feel like I have thought about it way too much already. But I think a lot of people who are using it as an easy example of loathsome behavior haven't thought about it enough.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 5:34 AM on September 5, 2015


The comic? Yeah, at this point I don't think people are using the comic as the measure of what constitutes sealioning anymore; it was a first point of reference for a lot of people, and did provide an easy name for the behaviors. But I don't think the solidness of sealioning's definition rests on the comic's message delivery systems; we've moved beyond that now, and as has been demonstrated in this thread, people can make a fairly consistent description of sealioning without using the original comic.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 5:49 AM on September 5, 2015 [4 favorites]


That said, I think this is one of Watermark's less obtuse comics. Like I was certain this was a comic making fun of people who engage in doe-eyed JAQing off in online discussions. Like pretty much any visual art, it does have some wriggle room for interpretation, as evidenced by the differing (especially initial) takes on it. I think that's part of the reason why people decided to write about the behavior set rather to continually point to the comic without further explanation.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 5:56 AM on September 5, 2015 [3 favorites]


What the hell is wrong with all of you? You don't IRON a SEAL, for fuck's sake - they live in the water so they never get wrinkles. You don't need to drag a seal out of its fucking home and iron it. So don't do sealironing, it's pointless and stupid. Also can you PLEASE spell it correctly???

And another thing: if you have any ions, don't let them waft about unprotected - seal those ions up, for fuck's sake. It's called ionsealing, and you should get on that shit TODAY.

Also, can we start talking about how great the sea is? We should be lionising the sea, because it is really awesome. So please, start sealionising NOW. Just stop laying around every morning in bed, lying about the sea.

In fact, let's get those ions out of their seals and attach them to some seals. Some ions of iron should do the trick - just steal some if you have to. Seal-ioning is the only way to positively charge the seals so they can charge positively into the sea, with steel in their hearts, and start lionising it.

So I don't want to see you say you lay in lying on, see. Don't seal ions or iron seals - steal iron ions, ionise seals with the iron ions we'll unseal, and steely seals so ioned with iron can see the sea lionised.

GOD, it's so OBVIOUS.
posted by the quidnunc kid at 6:18 AM on September 5, 2015 [5 favorites]


This is a pretty confused thread. I'm not at all sure that the linked article is discussing the same thing that David Malki is depicting in the Wondermark strip. It also provides absolutely no examples, either in reality or constructed for illustrative purposes. I'm also pretty sure that a sizable fraction of the comments in this read are describing some third thing that isn't quite either of them.

I think the most confusing thing to me is that, as far as I know, both the linked essay and the comic were written during the height of gamergate (or at least public awareness of it), and were about a very specific version of a broader class of behaviors that could fall under "sealioning" -- in this case, aggressive, coordinated attacks mostly on women on twitter disguised as floods of neutral, apparently reasonable, but unending questions. It was unpleasant and vicious stuff. I feel like a lot of the people "defending" some version of sealioning must just be really missing this context? Gamergate has only been explicitly mentioned once in this entire thread that I spot.

Note that meta-sealioning was all part of the game, used as a technique for continuing harassment (why can't we just ask questions? what's wrong with questions? don't you want to have free and open discussion? what kind of person wouldn't want that?) and a lot of the reactions here seem to be unwittingly playing into that.
posted by advil at 8:30 AM on September 5, 2015 [17 favorites]


you can always walk away, just like Socrates' interlocutors could - they didn't, because they thought they were right, so why would they?

Walking away from where Socrates is standing to get out of his mouth range is a different thing than walking away from e.g. the whole of your social media interactions to get away from where an undifferentiated mass of no-boundary-having dinguses are pestering you. Or having to build a bulwark of blocks and filters and such and rely on their laziness to universally outmatch their shitty impulses. The comparison is far from clean.

But I think a lot of people who are using it as an easy example of loathsome behavior haven't thought about it enough.

I don't think much of anyone is using it as definitive of loathsome behavior in general, so much as a reasonably apropos figurative touchstone for a specific class of loathsome behavior contemporary to when it got popular. It seems pretty presumptive to decide that the reason people who reference it are doing so is that they just haven't thought it through, rather than that in the actual context it arose they thought it hit more or less the right note.

The "it's just a silly comic strip" argument is a fair one but one that itself detooths just about any criticism of the use of the comic strip as a reference point. If it's a silly comic, there's zero necessity to deep dive into why it's not a sufficiently robust and structurally consistent formal characterization of whatever the heck, so playing to both of those angles feels like a sort of pointlessly lawyery "my client would never do something that terrible, and if he did it was completely legal" sort of thing.
posted by cortex at 8:58 AM on September 5, 2015 [11 favorites]


I don't see it as just a GamerGate thing, although GamerGate did a lot of it. It's something I've seen done by specific varieties of religious apologists, antitheists, and radical feminists, and is a standard tactic when it comes to "debating" evolution and climate change.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 10:01 AM on September 5, 2015 [3 favorites]


Also comes up continuously in far too many "discussions" about immigration and asylum seekers, especially if they're Muslim or presumed as such.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 10:23 AM on September 5, 2015


Yeah, the reason the woman actually mentions sea lions in the first panel is because that's how you would draw the gamergater wrath down on you, is by using the hashtag or mentioning the word on Twitter.
posted by KathrynT at 10:51 AM on September 5, 2015 [3 favorites]


Or, for a while, mentioning any of their targets. That seems to have calmed down a little, or they've just got more selective about who they pile on to and bother me less.
posted by Artw at 11:18 AM on September 5, 2015


So, if you've read any of Socrates's stuff...

So, you have read any of Socrates's stuff ? As opposed to what Plato and Xenophon said he said ? Man, did I miss the boat...

Oops, upon scrolling up, I see the point has been raised.

As for his supposed misogyny, well, apart from a creature of his times, and so forth, he did have a high opinion of Diotima of Mantinea, if I recall correctly, and was she not one of the few who turned the table and Socratically interrogated Socrates ?
posted by y2karl at 11:19 AM on September 5, 2015 [2 favorites]


I've seen Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, it seems like it covers the basics.
posted by Artw at 12:22 PM on September 5, 2015 [4 favorites]


Except for the fact that Mr. Sokrates was making eyes at the young ladies rather than Ted and not asking any questions, that is ?
Well, on the other hand, he wasn't wearing pants...
posted by y2karl at 12:55 PM on September 5, 2015


Dust in the wind, dude...
posted by Artw at 1:27 PM on September 5, 2015


so playing to both of those angles feels like a sort of pointlessly lawyery "my client would never do something that terrible, and if he did it was completely legal" sort of thing.

I was "playing to both angles" because the deeper I got into this debate about a cartoon sea lion, the more ridiculous the whole thing felt. It's a silly strip about a sea lion, but people are using it (incorrectly, I think) to make a serious point. They are scapegoating a cartoon sea lion! It's not that I think "sea lioning" doesn't happen. It's that I think the sea lion in this strip is being unfairly maligned. I feel like an idiot spending any time defending a cartoon sea lion, at the same time that part of me doesn't like what the scapegoating of this sea lion represents.

People love to act smug and point fingers, and I can get kind of squirmy about that when it's justified but it really bothers me when they're doing it for bullshit reasons. I despise scapegoating, apparently to the point where I'll waste my precious minutes on this Earth defending a cartoon sea lion. Find some instance of actually sea lion-ing, and use that as your example. There should be plenty of examples out there. Don't pile on some cartoon sea lion (or anybody, really) if they aren't even actually doing the thing you're so outraged about.

You can say, well, it's gone far beyond the original comic at this point, but people still reference the comic to explain what "sea lioning" means. They point to this as an example of a loathsome behavior, and it's not a good example and only muddies up the whole discussion.

Dust in the wind, dude...

Too true. I'm not changing anybody's mind apparently, so all I'm doing is wasting my time here.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 4:40 PM on September 5, 2015 [2 favorites]


They are scapegoating a cartoon sea lion!

I'm sure some select sliver are, but most folks are using a sea lion in a satirical comic as a reference point in a discussion about the obnoxious behavior the comic is satirizing. silly satirical things can be referential touchstones without being generally mistaken for literal, bulletproof, holistic summaries of the issue to which they're being related.

Removing the figurative thing from context and then saying it's not a robust argument when taken overly literally and out of context is silly.
posted by cortex at 5:28 PM on September 5, 2015 [11 favorites]


It's a silly strip about a sea lion, but people are using it (incorrectly, I think) to make a serious point. They are scapegoating a cartoon sea lion! It's not that I think "sea lioning" doesn't happen. It's that I think the sea lion in this strip is being unfairly maligned.

I'm trying to parse what the larger point is here. People have outlined what sealioning is, and what it entails. We've talked about how sealioning is used, ways it can be deflected, and behaviors that are related to it. People have shared their personal experiences of having to deal with sealioning. The comic strip itself isn't even a part of the picture anymore. The concept of sealioning no longer applies to the fictional animal you feel is being so misaligned, at least not to any of the many, many people who have been talking about sealioning here.

This comes across as a bizarre concern troll, to be honest, because I have a hard time believing that, despite everything that's been talked about here, the thing you can't abide is the (mistaken) belief that a 2D marine mammal is being scapegoated.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 5:41 PM on September 5, 2015 [7 favorites]


It doesn't stop with the sea lion, you see. People hold up this bullshit example, and use it to make other bullshit cases. This kind of thing happens all the time online, and soon we're up to our necks in bullshit. I don't really give a wet slap about the cartoon sea lion's feelings, because he's not real. I care about people looking at something like this and not seeing, or being willing to admit, how there could be another take on it where your example of despicable behavior is actually somebody reacting with humorous hyperbole to getting picked on by terrible, entitled people. I care about scapegoating and smug finger-pointing and othering and pointless arguments... which you will presumably agree this has become.

You know, I just re-read my very first comment in this thread, and I think it said everything I ever needed to say about this whole thing.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 6:59 PM on September 5, 2015


It did, UH. Heh, I liked it, wish you would have left it there. It was a good observation, but not worth arguing about.
posted by Drinky Die at 7:08 PM on September 5, 2015


I came in late, made a comment about a comment that, upon re-reading the thread, was already made far more times in far more variations than I noticed halfway through making my very own first comment. Which admittedly was not to the point of the post.

Your comment, Ursula Hitler,on the other hand, was thoughtful and nuanced, especially on the topic of scapegoating. Or, tl/dr, what Drinky Die said.

So, I must apologize for adding to the noise by coming in so late, reacting to one tiny phrase and being too lazy to scroll all the way through this rope of words tinier, on this so-called smartphone, than album liner notes on the fold out sleeve of an album on a cassette, and, you know, actually follow the conversations. Not to mention not being serious.

And this thread reminds me how easy it is
to misunderstand what people write online when there are multiple conversations going on, some of them even being conducted between more than one person.
posted by y2karl at 8:49 PM on September 5, 2015 [1 favorite]


I care about people looking at something like this and not seeing, or being willing to admit, how there could be another take on it where your example of despicable behavior is actually somebody reacting with humorous hyperbole to getting picked on by terrible, entitled people.

Once again, this cartoon was not intended as an example. Rather, it was a response to a great many specific real-life examples of groups using sealioning in a coordinated way to harass women, women who had the temerity to express opinions about video games (such as that they are sexist in many ways and shouldn't be); these attacks were happening frequently (and also reached somewhat widespread attention) about a year ago in very public contexts, mainly twitter. The people doing this were(/are) reactionary, unpleasant, privileged white male "gamers", many of whom were also into things like cheering about SWATing women or even doing it.

With this context (maybe which was not entirely clear), I don't see any way to interpret the italicized text above except as effectively describing the women harassees and allies who were reacting at the time to this harassment as "terrible, entitled people", as well as describing the harassers who were(/are) trying to defend sexism in gaming/games as people "reacting with humorous hyperbole to getting picked on".

I don't mean to suggest that everything that might fall under the heading of "sealioning" or flooding or whatever is equal, and (as was pointed out in many internet places at the time) one of the insidious things about the way gamergaters were using it is that malicious harassment via sealioning is sometimes hard to distinguish from people who have no idea what is going on jumping in and just genuinely asking a question or two; it bleeds over into gaslighting attempts to make the victims believe that they aren't being harassed at all. But (though the OP did not provide this context) the links that this thread is based on are not about everything that might fall under this heading, and so it makes no sense to me to object to the cartoon or the linked article on general grounds.
posted by advil at 8:40 AM on September 6, 2015 [6 favorites]


Oh noes, a political cartoon discusses a political strategy of political advocates in political current events using a metaphor!
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 10:20 AM on September 6, 2015


advil: With this context (maybe which was not entirely clear)

Indeed, it was not, and I feel a bit sheepish for not being up-to-date on it. The article didn't mention it at all, and the comic... well, we've already covered that, I think.

So thanks to everyone who filled in the background. It's all more understandable now.
posted by clawsoon at 6:42 AM on September 8, 2015


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