I am aware of
- Sea-lioning
- Gaslighting
- Gish-Galloping
- Dogpiling
I want to know I theres any others I’m not aware of
There is a series "The Alt Right Playbook" that covers a lot of bad faith and manipulative tactics, many of which are used online.
I hate the one where you call them a fascist (because they literally are) and then they come around and call you a “blue MAGA”.
like bitch, if I was “blue MAGA” I’d be making IEDs and forcing abortions on women and shit. ain’t nobody got time for that. I’m building a garden so I can fuckin eat this year.
Anyone who unironically says “blue MAGA” immediately gives themselves away as someone to not take seriously.
@BrainInABox@lemmy.ml is a troll.
I committed the grievous sin of disagreeing with @internetCitizen, so they have stalked my comment history to respond call me a troll under every comment I’ve made.
Calling someone “blue MAGA” is the equivalent of saying “no you!”
However, it’s time to stop pretending like some small group of “MAGA” conservatives have hijacked the party and taken things too far. The monied interests backing Trump are the same as have been backing Republicans for decades. The Federalist Society, the Heritage Foundation, etc. Mitch McConnell has been working to fill the federal courts with Federalist picks for a long time. Picking or just outright manufacturing court cases that would set new precedents. Hell, even those thinktanks are just recent iterations of the same interest’s attempts to shape the government as they see fit. Trump is just a nepo baby turned grifter who got lucky because his grift was actually effective at attracting and controlling the loudest segment of the Republican base.
Trump just transparently said “As long as I get filthy rich, get to be king, and you keep [metaphorically] sucking my dick, I’ll keep my followers in line and use my position to put your people in power so they can implement your ‘Project 25’ or whatever.” Republicans mostly objected to him because he lacked subtlety and was transparently greedy and petty. He ignored the game of slow, subtle changes and manipulation through “decorum” that Republicans had become experts in. Unfortunately for us, that worked wonders on a subset of the population
The people who helped those Republican politicians keep getting elected and basically wrote their proposed laws noticed Trump was popular. When it became apparent that Trump’s followers were loyal, the money jumped at the chance to fast track their vision and backed him completely. They helped tweak and hone Trump’s message to amplify his grifter magic. That plus some changes to election laws around the country, gerrymandering, and likely other more covert, extralegal vote manipulation got him back in power.
Blue maga? I wouldn’t encourage people to vote for the Democrat party if it had any viable competition.
No, I think you have the definition of that word wrong blue Maga is just the people on the left that are making money, commenting, andreacting to the shit people do on the right. CNN and MSNBC telling us the latest bullshit Trump has done is a blue Maga type behavior
I was under the impression it was the “Hillary warned us” and “Putin is behind everything” crowd, since it mirrors the MAGA saviour and conspiracy fantasies.
Oh wow. You see, Russia is behind all this, holy crap this nation is cooked. It’s fucked it’s gone. I have a person on the Internet telling me Russia isn’t behind anything and they are totally not planning the destruction of the United States because they Totally have not had a singular leader(Putin) for the last 30 or so years where we have TOTTALY NOT had disruption every four or so😏
Anyways, I looked up the definition for myself and it looks like you’re the one that’s right, At least about the Hillary part. so sorry for my rant.
You think all MAGA people are actively building IEDs.
I use bluemaga to refer to people who behave like MAGA supporters but for the Dems: people who believe all disagreement should be forbidden, like the guy currently stalking me across multiple instances to insult me because I disagreed with him about the Democrats policy on Gaza.
people who believe all disagreement should be forbidden, like the guy currently stalking me across multiple instances to insult me because I disagreed with him about the Democrats policy on Gaza.
Btw I have asked you what your policy would be instead so that I can understand what your take is, but you won’t clarify, so I can only conclude you are a massive troll.
Let me say tldr it once again:
I put forth the claim that we have a better shot of influencing the dems for a ceasefire that the evangelical Rs. Palestine is in desperate need for one.
By the time of the election Palestine was in bad shape and needs to be able to live to fight another day. I never said dems were saints; just that the pragmatic need for the palestiniant people means we need to put political support in the place we can most influence; which at the time is voting blue.
Go ahead and let us know what your policy take is. If you are serious and not a troll that is.
Btw I have asked you what your policy would be instead so that I can understand what your take is, but you won’t clarify, so I can only conclude you are a massive troll.
I have, you ignored my posts so you could continue to slander and strawman me. All for the sin of disagreement. You concluded i was a “Massive troll” because I disagreed with you.
By the time of the election Palestine was in bad shape and needs to be able to live to fight another day
Because the Democrats were helping to exterminate them.
I never said dems were saints;
No, but you do deny their genocide, and attack anyone who disagrees.
that the pragmatic need for the palestiniant people means we need to put political support in the place we can most influence; which at the time is voting blue.
The Democrats were and are completely committed to the Palestinian genocide, we have no ability to influence that, as the previous 18 months showed. But you will not accept that, because you are a genocide denier.
Go ahead and let us know what your policy take is. If you are serious and not a troll that is.
Go ahead and read my posts rather than stalking my comment history to call me a troll under unrelated posts.
Using a wedge issue as a universal bludgeon to attack anyone that disagrees with them.
Not sure what technique that’s called. Concern troll, possibly?
Also, vote manipulation. Basically they spin up a bunch of alts across different instances and boost/demote posts and comments in an attempt to steer discourse toward their agenda.
Sock-puppet or from 4chan “samefagging”. Apologies for the use of the word.
Concern troll is, as I understand it, more directly faking concern for a person. Things like "Are you okay? Do you need to talk to someone?"because you rebutted their argument, or “Suicide/self harm are never the answer” because you posted an opinion they disagree with. Sometimes it even rises to the point of reporting comments as self harm in a way that gets an automated or admin response.
Whataboutism
Well maybe but lemme tell you about the others!
“Thought-terminating clichés”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_cliché
Also… I don’t think it has a name, but dubiously claiming any of these examples in an argument. Maybe it’d just be called “deflection”.
I’ve seen so many valid arguments shutdown as whataboutism, sealioning, concern trolling when they were valid arguments. It’s just as much bullshit as actually doing any of those things.
Here’s a handy guide to help.
Why do we not have some brilliant mind just fully memorize all of the ins and outs of how these arise and just crush bad faith arguments by simply labeling them in real time rather than engaging with them?
Like, if framed correctly “I don’t engage in logical fallacy. I will immediately call it out, move on, and go back to the relevant topic.”
“Oh you don’t care about starving children?”
“That’s an appeal to emotion. I won’t engage with this obvious logical fallacy. I will address the causes of children suffering to alleviate their suffering.”
“But the cause is illegal immigrants!!!”
“That’s a strawman. I won’t engage with logical fallacies. If you’d like to have a discussion about solving problems, Im all ears, but until we’re done pointing fingers, this conversation is over.”
It’s actually somewhat effective in my experience. Another thing I’ve recently started doing is calling out mean comments. Nobody wants to think of themselves as a mean person but it’s quite difficult accusation to argue against when the evidence is right there in front of their face.
That’s a tactic I’ve seen widely used, especially by the assholes we are talking about.
Words have meaning to us, and fascists love that because they are not beholden to any truth at all.
To be clear, almost every argument contains a fallacy in it. Having a fallacy in an argument only introduces the possibility of it being wrong, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s wrong.
An example of a valid argument is like:
P1: Socrates is a man P2: All men are mortal C: Socrates is mortal
The conclusion is guaranteed to be correct if the premises are correct. Most scientific arguments are technically invoking a fallacy or are invalid in some way, due to the extrapolation from an experiment in lab conditions to a more general conclusion.
Okay I’m free now.
Im so glad you gave me this gem.
Your response itself relies on several fallacies… false equivalence, hasty generalization, equivocation, a strawman, and non sequitur reasoning, probably more?
You’re incorrectly conflating logical fallacies (which are clear mistakes in reasoning) with inductive uncertainty or experimental limitations in science. Logical fallacies invalidate reasoning structures. Scientific reasoning explicitly includes uncertainty and error correction as fundamental principles; it’s not fallacious; it’s cautious and probabilistic.
Additionally, your example of Socrates is actually demonstrating deductive validity, a different kind of reasoning entirely. Thus, your argument misrepresents logic and science simultaneously. Please correct these fallacies if you want this conversation to proceed productively
Edit: see? Worked like a charm.
Appeal to Fallacy.
It might not be a fallacy.
A fallacy doesn’t make an argument wrong.
There are degrees of fallacies.
Claiming a statement is wrong because there might be a fallacy is a thought-ending argument. There’s more nuance and relatability in rhetoric. Refusing to engage because someone’s using a fallacy is reasonable, but calling it by name isn’t a magic spell that forces someone to throw in the towel.
This is a good one. The use of fallacies doesn’t necessarily void an argument, it just fails to support it logically.
For example, I could craft a perfect, clean, cold-cut argument so water-tight and beautiful that even ben-fucking-shapiro would have a come-to-jesus. Calling my opponent a “dickhead” at the end (ad hominem) doesn’t prove anything, but it doesn’t nullify the entire rest of the argument either. Plus it’s fun.
I agree, an argument can be a narrative, too. One where the second person is a dickhead.
This is everywhere on the internet. I think it’s people looking for an easy way out in arguing. Purposely include a few logic fallacies and watch as the vast majority of people latch onto them. Ignoring any previous points they were trying to make. I like ad hominem.
Here is a great piece someone put together a while ago which goes through many of the techniques bad actors use.
I remember reading that list years and years ago and thinking how petty it was that so much effort has gone into it.
Now I’m a little bit worried about how far ahead of the game these cunts are.
Dude. Power seekers have been doing this shit since ancient times, and you’re getting your panties in a twist about people who fight back against them? Anons know this stuff because they’ve been dealing with it since the dawn of the net.
To be fair I wasn’t around in ancient times to get my loincloth in a twist about it. When I saw that list the Internet was just moving away from Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan chat rooms. It wasn’t the all-pervasive life-replacement it is today.
One I see people use frequently and I’m not sure they realize it’s a bad argument is the fallacy of relative privation.
“X is bad. We should do something to fix X.”
“Y is so much worse. I can’t believe you want to fix X when we need to fix Y.”
Both X and Y can be bad and need to be fixed. Fixing one doesn’t preclude fixing the other.
An alternate form of this is:
“A is bad”
“B is worse, so A is fine.”
I think the most common thing I see online and offline is constantly adding more sources to the discussion to the point that the other person feels they can’t know anything. My grandmother does this with her nonsense and pseudo-intellectual books. Just because I haven’t read “why inner city black people have guns 3” doesn’t mean I can’t not be a racist.
Yeah, feels like a form of gish galloping
That’s sounds like a made up term
All terms are made up terms
I have never seen an online discussion where gaslighting was used. People usually just learned the term and they think it’s a synonym for lying.
It wasn’t a nazi salute, he was just waving
Gaslighting could take the form of saying “my political team would never do [the thing].” Their political team subsequently does [the thing]. Then claiming they never said the original statement. Sometimes they’re even so fucking stupid as to leave that comment visible so you can just screenshot it and ask “this you?”
… ask me how I know.
Basically every step of the narcissists prayer is attempted gaslighting
That didn’t happen. And if it did, it wasn’t that bad. And if it was, that’s not a big deal. And if it is, that’s not my fault. And if it was, I didn’t mean it. And if I did, you deserved it.
How is that not just lying?
Gaslighting (if my understanding is correct) is manipulating someone. Making someone question their own sanity, blaming them, isolating from other people and making them dependent on you.
Lying on the internet to win a stupid argument with a stranger hardly can even start to measure to that.
Gaslighting is lying but not all lying is gaslighting. Think overt propaganda but on a more personal level
From my example, the part where they claim to have not made the argument is what I’d consider gaslighting. My understanding of gaslighting is any attempt to make someone question reality. So the reality is they definitely said one thing. When that goes wrong, they claim to have never said it. It’s a tool of someone who manipulates.
Then almost any blatant lie would be gaslighting, which I don’t think fits the meaning. My understanding is there are more necessary attributes for a situation to be “gaslighting”, mainly the manipulation and dependency.
If someone lies about what they said in writing (in the age of internet archive of all things) it’s just a plain lie, and a dumb one at that.
Whataboutism
“Russia invaded ukraine! Putin must be held accountable!”
“Yeah well what about Iraq, 2003???”
That’s the “tu quoque”, aka “you too” argument evasion
Fallacy accusations.
When someone does not want to argue about your points they will attack the way you used to made them. If you check hard enough you can find fallacies in most online conversations. So if someone wants they could easily accuse anyone of making this or that fallacy. Some of them being also kind of subjective. Was this a valid example or was it a strawman?
They would just change the debate subject and put you on the defensive defending yourself of making fallacies.
I just usually point out this attitude and end the debate when this happens.
Man that’s such a strawman, you’re completely misrepresenting why they bring up fallacies.
Is there a fallacy fallacy? where people assume that because something has a fallacy its wrong, or they accuse something of having a non-existant fallacy?
There is indeed
A fallacy matters if it’s central to proving the argument, otherwise it probably doesn’t. Eg Bringing up an anecdote, or a subjective experience as a way of illustrating a point could be said to be fallacious, but is not, if the argument is well supported enough that would stand without it.
I just had an argument where I ended my point with the words “this is a pure could have been:” and added a very likely scenario that may well could have come to pass it some events were different. Obviously it was speculation and not central to the previous argument, but in my estimation likely.
Then other person instead of responding to actual points took the last part and accused me of should’a, would’a, could’a.
Dude, yes! But not the point, also I was the one that pointed it out. The type of person that would explain to a comedian their own joke.
False dichotomy - Assuming that because someone doesn’t agree with one viewpoint, they must fully support the opposite. Framing the issue as if there are only two mutually exclusive positions, when in fact there may be many shades in between.
Strawmanning - Misrepresenting someone’s argument - usually by exaggerating, distorting, or taking it out of context - so it’s easier to attack or refute.
Ad hominem - Attacking the character, motives, or other traits of the person making the argument rather than addressing the substance of the argument itself.
Reductionism - The tendency to reduce every complex issue to a single cause - like blaming everything on capitalism, fascism, patriarchy, etc. - while ignoring other contributing factors.
Moving the goalposts - Changing the criteria of an argument or shifting its focus once the original point has been addressed or challenged - usually to avoid conceding.
Hasty generalizations - Treating entire groups as if they’re uniform, attributing a trait or behavior of some individuals to all members of that group.
Oversimplification - Ignoring the nuance and complexity inherent in most issues, reducing them to overly simple terms or black-and-white thinking.Moving the goalposts.
Butwhatabout.
Appeal to hypocrisy is big.
I thought it was called “whataboutism”?
Yeah, same thing.
Flooding the zone (which now that I think about it is close enough to gish-galloping for there not to be much of a distinction), whataboutism, and moving the goalposts are all extremely common.
Whataboutism and moving the goalposts are the ones I see most often.
