What are tankies? What does sea-lioning mean?locked

BouncyFerret@lemmy.world to No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 251 points –

I've run across these terms several times, but without enough context to figure out what they mean. Could someone help me out, please?

ETA All of you are amazing! A huge thank you to everyone who responded, and an extra thank you to those who have provided links or explanations to further and/or related information. I am learning so much by reading all of these comments!

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"Sealioning" here refers to a way of trolling by asking ill-intended questions, usually disguising it in innocence. When other members try to explain and help, they'd try to lure them into hours of discussion upon it, usually by knowingly misinterpreting what they heard.

Or worse, just directly disrespect and reject all the suggestions the commenters provided. The essence is being a waste of time for everyone.

I dont mind most sea mammals...

But sea lions?

I could do without sea lions

https://wondermark.com/c/1k62/

That's what coined the term

But y'know, if someone walks up and makes disparaging racist remarks about how they don't like your kind, following them round and demanding they explain themselves out loud is about the most appropriate response that exists.

I mean, yeah, if they're racist.

But just because the comic picked a sea lion doesn't mean it's about race... It's just an easy way to identify a group of things.

It could be "people who kiss their grown children on the mouth" or "people who smoke crack 5 times a day".

It's any group of people.

I like to call it JAQing off

Sealioning is a sort of evolution of JAQing off. It's the JAQ coupled with feigned innocence and indignance when people actually stop putting up with BS.

Actually after thinking a bit deeper about it, it mirrors Socratic Questioning, but with the opposite intended end goal of muddying the waters instead of gaining clarity.

Is this the same as "concern trolling"?

Concern trolling is acting like you're concerned about the consequences of something.

Like,

If we let people wear masks during COVID, we'll see more bank robberies because masks are normalized!

Sea Lioning would be if I just kept asking you questions about why masks help, often while asking you to link sources. I don't actually want to see any sources tho. I'm just going to keep asking new questions and for more sources until you get tired and stop replying.

Because the more time you waste on me, they less you help people who are genuinely asking for it. Plus when you stop replying, I can claim that as a victory because that must mean there aren't any sources that agree with you.

I have seen these types of scenarios before, just didn't realize they had names.

TIL

It's related but it differs on the form. Concern trolling is derailing online discussions and debates by simulating concern over a seemingly valid counterpoint, making all participants waste time and effort arguing a previously settled matter, or pretending to just be playing devil's advocate. Acting as if, although you support the cause or discussion at hand, you somehow still have some valid concerns to oppose.

I don't think so. As far as I'm aware, concern trolling is an act to lower morale and place distrust among the opposing side. A person who's on side B pretends to be on side A.

Let's say you're an admin on this site, and you have made a post asking for server donations.

Then just when all was going well, another member comes to the comments, who seems to support you and praise you really well at first. The rest of their comment is then telling everyone that they "appreciate your work", but "you can't handle it", because this or that. Causing some of your genuine members to question you with their "concerns"

I'm on your side, so you should take my bullshit concerns seriously!

Concern trolling is "raising concerns" about certain issues that have little to no basis in reality and only serves to inject bigotry and bad ideas. For example, people were concerned about "the gays(tm)" spreading their immoral gay AIDS virus all over innocent children during the 80s and into the 90s, only to learn that AIDS is spread through contact with broken mucosa membranes, which then shifted to "the gays(tm) are pedos" argument.

The "concerns" are nearly always disingenuous.

I've seen Sealioning used quite a bit in a particular Lemmy instance that would self describe themselves as Pro-Russia & Pro-China, as a way of shutting down discourse between people who disagree with them. There are people who disagree with a particular narrative, and they're discounted immediately for wanting to know how someone would arrive at a pro-Russian & pro-China position.

Also they'll just "whatabout!" and change the subject whenever unassailable critiques of these regimes come up. As if its is only possible to hold outrage in a single direction at a time.

I'll have you know I'm capable of disliking EVERYONE mentioned in a given conversation.

Everyone points to the comic in regards to sealioning, but I have always equated it to posters who are incapable of having an actual debate and keep saying "Why? Why? Why? Why?" until they get tired and fall asleep under the pier (but then their friend wakes up and takes over).

I usually think of sealioning as also requiring some element of butting in with your pet issue when it's not apart of the discussion.

OH YEAH WELL WHAT ABOUT UKRAINE?!

I usually file that under "whataboutism"

Biden's gas prices are so high. Worst president ever.

gas prices go down

mention that Biden should be congratulated for lowering prices if he was the cause for them going up

Yeah well... he's still the worst for all these other reasons!

Worst bit is sealioning is almost indistugishable from legitimate questions a lot of time.

what do you mean by legitimate questions?

when the person asking is actually curious about finding out the answer

how do you know if they're actually curious or just seaLioning?

That would depend a lot on the context. What catches a moderator's attention on an issue like this wouldn't be seeing the individual post, rather seeing the reports about it. A mod usually acts on the consensus of the community and tries to determine if the members are correct in reporting things. They may be correct or wrong, but most of the time it'll be correct. And we'd of course step back and apologize if we thought we were wrong.