When someone repeats an argument that has been proven false /badly argued many times before, but keeps repeating it in hopes of drowning out opposition or derailing a thread. Yet not disruptive enough to get banned on forums, as it wraps itself in non-hostile, nicely written sentences.

How exactly do moderators deal with this kind of behaviour?

  • essell@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    In politics it’s been called “flooding the zone”

    Could also qualify as “sandbagging” or simply “bad faith”

  • MightyThistle 🌺♀️@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Gish galloping I think? If they’re repeatedly asking you to prove the argument false that falls under sealioning too. It’s also a very common tactic for some trolls to pretend to be civil in order to bypass suspicion.

    • TalkingFlower@lemmy.worldOP
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      2 months ago

      It would be a Gish gallop if they do some brigading; that’s how they usually scare off OP. Since he did not know he was making a controversial statement, and did not pre-emptively stop the Gish Gallop.

    • steeznson@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      This one I’ve always been wary of. I studied philosophy so I know a bit about arguments and sealioning is unusual because it can only really take place over the internet where someone is asking questions in bad faith and you can’t 100% call them out because you don’t know their identity for sure. Firstly I don’t like the idea that questions can be bad faith - especially seemingly trivial or obvious ones - since that goes against the Socratic method of questioning all your beliefs/shibboleths. Secondly, it is so context dependent that I think it is hard to universalise it like you can do with other fallacies like false dilemma (everyone is either a tequila or a whisky person, etc.)

      • steeznson@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Actually it’s quite funny, if you take a broad interpretation of sealioning that does not involve the internet, Ancient Athens sentenced Socrates to death for “sealioning” in 400BC lol.

    • starlinguk@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Sea lioning is pretending to be interested in a reasonable discussion when you’re really looking to wind someone up until they lose their temper.