I’ve also been spending a lot of time helping out my content creator friends with their channels and discord servers and whatnot. I’m making a game. No, another game. I’m still slow at everything. I miss people.
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.
Why I stopped indulging people who followed this argumentative “format”
This is so real and applicable to every dinner party I’ve ever been to
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.
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.
If any of my followers feel like you’re being sealioned, I can play elephant seal and help destroy them.
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.
Still important.
So many people in my social circles need to recognize the sealion problem we have, and stop feeding the wildlife.
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.
My great-grandmother was pregnant for over a decade of her life.
She was pregnant at least fifteen times, had over a dozen children. Raised all of them in a big rambling farmhouse in central Pennsylvania.
And I thought about her this afternoon, lying in bed with my spouse after my lazy weekend nap, snuggling him and burying my nose in his hair, taking deep breaths of the scent of his skin. This man who is the center of my universe, my best friend, one of two reasons why I literally decided I had to live and kept fighting through the pain after surgery when I really wanted to just let go and die: I held him closer and I thought of her.
I thought of how family myth tells us that after a decade of being pregnant pretty much constantly, she kicked my great-grandfather out of their house. How she made him go live in his workshop, and he came to the house for meals and to check in.
But he slept in his workshop.
Not because she didn’t love him, but because she did.
She loved him, and if they slept in the same bed together, these two people who had crossed an ocean together, had built a life together after getting out of Poland together, they’d have sex. And because cheap, reliable, universal birth control wasn’t available then, and she was terribly fecund, apparently, she’d become pregnant again, inevitably.
My great-grandmother was TIRED of being pregnant.
So she kicked her love out of the house, and he went. He lived in his workshop, on their farm, and they stopped sleeping together, in every sense of the word. My father tells me he remembers as a child his grandfather sitting outside his workshop, leaning back on his chair, and looking up at the house in which he couldn’t sleep anymore, just… sad.
They missed each other desperately from across the yard.
I listen to @adhocavenger sleep, to the sound of his breathing, a sound that’s as familiar to me as my own heartbeat, and I can’t imagine having to sleep away from him for long. To have to separate myself from my spouse or to have to completely eschew having the kind of sex they obviously enjoyed having. To not have him close enough at night that I can curl up to him and breathe in the scent of his skin.
And that, I think, is the sort of thing that I think maybe I take for granted. That I know I can be secure in the knowledge that I can have sex with my spouse when I want to, and not have a baby.
The personal is political. I do not want our country to continue to slide backward on reproductive freedom. I do not want us to lose our freedom, threatened and small as it may be.
There are a thousand small tragedies that we talk about from the Olde Days. The unwanted baby of the unmarried lass, of course.
But my heart breaks tonight for the story I was told as a child, of the lovingly married couple who had to sleep apart because she was just damn tired of being pregnant.
Because she’d been pregnant for a DECADE of her life.
Thank you for sharing this. I had never considered that aspect of the birth control revolution.
“Personal is pollitical”, agreed, whole heartedly.
I was one of those freaks who wasn’t allowed video games as a kid, so here is what I did with my life while everyone else and their mother was playing N64 and Gameboy:
Sometimes cats eat so fast they puke bruh. It’s not healthy. There are a ton of people reblogging this actually happy that there’s a solution for this.
my cat does this. and honestly this might solve his problems… i.e. SLOW THE FUCK DOWN, CAT.
I’m not gonna lie, I think I need one of these for me.
Dishes like this also help with dogs who eat too fast; it significantly lowers their chances of choking or bloat.
You know, these looks all silly but… they are perfect! Is your cat annoyed? Is your cat depressed? Does your cat eat too fast and suffocated itself? Does your cat eat too much? Is your cat castrated? Do your cats fight over food?
These are all perfect for that! Your cats like to hunt and have fun with their food so it’s better to give them some “difficulties” and way to use their brains: this is why a lot of these are called “intelligent toys”, because they stimulate play and hunt.
“I don’t have money for that!” DON’T WORRY! You can create your own intelligent toy with whatever you have at home!
This is better for cats than dogs, mostly because dogs try to destroy the toy first so I won’t suggest you to use toiler paper rolls or plastic bottles!
“My cat is too old for this stuff, it would stop eating!” YOU CAN DO SOMETHING ELSE! Is your cat too old to play, buy a lot of little bowls and instead of putting its food in a single one, split the food around the house. The cat will go around, searching for its food in a easy way and having a little hunt/play that will surely make its day a little more fun!
