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blackfoxx

The white male style of debate is to antagonize you until you snap. Then they win by default, because they make up their own rules in which being upset automatically invalidates your argument. The key is also to argue about things that they have no stake and experience in, so they dont snap first. Of course in the event that they do snap first, its of course passion, not anger…

White people are like little kids who make up new rules and obnoxious powers to keep themselves from losing….

At the end of it all, they are happy that you are so civil and can debate things rationally and clearly without getting upset. Everyone shakes hands and thanks everyone for being able to discuss “conflicting” viewpoints. Because after all everyone needs to hear the opposing side to truly be sophisticated. Even if you’ve heard that side all your life and it completely devalues you as a human being.

What i hear is that the mark of civilization to white people is being dehumanized and taking it like a champ.

They also have little to no concept of power dynamics in these ‘sophisticated” discussions.

sentforwho sentforwho

Why I stopped indulging people who followed this argumentative “format”

controlledeuphoria controlledeuphoria

This is so real and applicable to every dinner party I’ve ever been to

eviltessmacher

This is a particularly aggressive form of Sealioning.

Sealioning is the name given to a specific, pervasive form of aggressive and willfully intentional cluelessness, that masquerades as a sincere desire to understand.

A Sealion is someone who, when confronted with a fact that they don’t care to acknowledge, say, the persistence of systemic racism in America, will ask endlessly for “proof” and insist that it is the other person’s job to stop everything they are doing and address the issue to their satisfaction.

The purpose of Sealioning is never to actually learn or become more informed. The purpose is to interrogate. Much like actual interrogators, Sealions bombard their target with question after question, digging and digging until the target either says something stupid or is so pissed off that they react in the extreme. The other major reason why people hate Sealioning is because responding to it is a complete waste of time.

It’s an insidious trap. Responding to questions asked reasonably is, of course, a natural thing for people to do. I like to do it myself; educating others is generally pretty entertaining, especially if they are receptive to learning. Dismissing those questions can appear condescending or rude, especially if you actually are condescending or rude.

Of course, these questions are not asked because the person asking them genuinely wants to know the answer. If they did, they would do their own digging based on your statements, and only ask for obscure or difficult-to-discover information. This is the “debate principle”. It is best explained thusly: 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.

No, these questions are asked to make a responder waste their time. It works, too; I’ve responded to Sealions before, answering all their questions and claims for evidence, only to be greeted by even more willful ignorance. It’s a way to force people into responding to questions phrased neutrally but asked in bad faith.

The name “Sealioning” comes from a most splendid webcomic, “Wondermark”, by David Malki.

It can be found here: http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/873260-sea-lioning

Sealions are just “asking nicely” but they are asking questions that have been asked and answered fully many times, and are unwilling to so much as open a new tab to look up the answer, nor will they recognize the validity of your sources, your experience or expertise no matter what you do. It is impossible to satisfy a Sealion.

Make no mistake.

Sealioning is a specific form of harassment. You may not explain their inquiry has already been address. You may not cite a source. You may not refer to a previous answer. You definitely may not ever point them to a link. You must spend all your time and energy responding as much as you can to every little details of every innocent, polite little question they ask. Sealioning isn’t a sincere attempt at anything. It’s a calculated technique to grind an opponent down.

digitaldiscipline

If any of my followers feel like you’re being sealioned, I can play elephant seal and help destroy them.

mightyviper

Not only is this a thing, it’s actually something various hard right groups are teaching their members to do. It’s essentially just never backing down no matter what, never admitting someone else is correct, and always try to force the argument onto the path you want to go down. So I’ve found the best way to combat it is:

A) Call them out on their inability to admit they were wrong. This sounds pretty simple, but it’s very easy to get dragged into whatever they say next instead of just pointing out that you’ve proven their first point is bullshit yet they’re still yakking on.

B) They try to box you into a corner? Box them back. If they won’t accept a link, laugh at them for failing to understand it/read it. Call them out for trying to veer the conversation in another direction without yielding the point. Specifically state that you see their cheap tactics and find them weak and a sign of a poor debater.

C) Never let them move onto the next question. Demand they answer yours instead. Why should they get to set the terms of the debate? Why is it always them who deserves explanations?

D) Suggest that they’re arguing in bad faith. That they don’t really want an answer. And if they say no way? Then point out that someone arguing in good faith would do all the things they refuse to. They’d read links and evidence. They’d agree on at least *something*. And failing that, they’d walk away. Good faith arguers will reach a certain point and then just say agree to disagree. But these guys? Won’t. They will not leave it alone no matter what. That’s the hallmark of a sealion trained to demoralise us.

And when they indirectly admit that, you call them out on it.

Then you don’t leave it alone. Hound that fucking sealion until he honks for mercy.

ryanlewisandclark

Still important.

theriversdaughter

So many people in my social circles need to recognize the sealion problem we have, and stop feeding the wildlife.

fabulousworkinprogress

And in case anyone wasn’t clear: This method of argument (push until you snap) is absolutely a form of violence, because it requires you to care less about something in order for your opinion to be valid. It is silencing. It is degrading. It is dehumanizing. It is the very first step to making a person into a thing.

marasplayground

Something that has worked for me a few times in the past, is posing a simple question (paraphrased, because each sea-lion is a unique snowflake): Can you summarize what we’ve discussed / what I’ve told you?

A sea-lion will try to be inventive in injecting their opinion into their summary. Most are not nearly as clever as they think they are. Once you turn around the discussion (i.e. making their view the matter of debate) they tend to snap and turn into the squeal-lion.

But you’re not done yet. The squeal-lion will want to attract allies, with the bestest of arguments:

- I did this completely normal thing and they just went berserk I have no idea what caused that.

- Oh, a friend of mine has a kid/nephew/cousin who does that. She knows all about this and we talked about that. Really, i understand you. Please come to my next (bbq/dinner/holiday-get-together) so i can introduce you two via not-very-veiled opinionated sub-text (oh, and i also informed both of you of each others oddities to create an artificial divide before you’ve even met).

- It will make your behaviour/opinion/identity circumspect by baiting you to defend a sideline-case which is not quite related to what it was lioning about, but has superficial similarities. And then it will damn you for defending said case or moving you into that “bad” target-group. (Detecting sub-text attacks is a skill, most people don’t see them and even fewer understand how nefarious they are even when you point them out).

After sea-lioning failed, the squeal-lion mutation tries to make you appear to care more about something than is commonly accepted in their social circle.

A sea-lion is relatively easy to deal with. The squeal-lion is worse as it turns previously uninvested strangers into your enemy on a topic you didn’t really care about but suddenly have to, because someone squealed really loudly.

Save your content, Export your blog

Since Tumblr is in total knee-jerk mode, have no clue what they are doing, do yourself a favor and save your content.

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(Text is taken from tumblr.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360005118894-Export-your-blog)

You can export all of the content you’ve created for your blog, and Tumblr will package it up into a convenient ZIP file for you to download.

To start the process, go to your account settings on the web:

Click “Settings” under the account menu at the top of the dashboard (the person silhouette).
Select the blog you’d like to export on the right side of the page.
Scroll down to the “Export” section and click the “Export [blog name]” button.
You’ll see a message indicating that your backup is processing.

When your blog’s content is finished collecting, the processing message will be replaced with a “Download backup” button. Click this button to download a ZIP file of your blog’s exported contents.

If you want to export the contents of more than one of your blogs, you’ll need to initiate this process separately for each blog.

Your blog export may include:

A Posts folder, with an HTML file for each post (this includes reblogs and hidden posts).
A Media folder, with the media from your posts, plus any media you’ve uploaded (like in messaging). These files will be in the format you uploaded them in (JPG, GIF, PNG, MP4, and so on).
A representation of your blog’s messaging conversations, in XML format.
A representation of your blog’s posts, also in XML format.

Note that your backup may take some time to process. Check back on your blog’s settings page periodically to see if it has completed.

See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

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Save your content, Export your blog