Yeah. There are genuine types of sophisticated trolling which involve pretending to be overtly polite while refusing to engage in any respect with the substance of what the other person’s saying, using politeness as a shield to sneak bullshit and bad-faith engagement into the discourse while making the other person look unreasonable if they start getting irritated about it.
In about 100% of cases where I’ve seen someone accused of “sealioning,” though, it is just that they are trying to engage with the conversation and ask for sources, if you have a certain way of approaching disagreement, that’s kryptonite to your argument and so the only response is to start whining about sealioning.
I have definitely come across what your first paragraph describes. Both sealioning and concern trolling definitely happens, on this site and on others.
Yeah. There are genuine types of sophisticated trolling which involve pretending to be overtly polite while refusing to engage in any respect with the substance of what the other person’s saying, using politeness as a shield to sneak bullshit and bad-faith engagement into the discourse while making the other person look unreasonable if they start getting irritated about it.
In about 100% of cases where I’ve seen someone accused of “sealioning,” though, it is just that they are trying to engage with the conversation and ask for sources, if you have a certain way of approaching disagreement, that’s kryptonite to your argument and so the only response is to start whining about sealioning.
I have definitely come across what your first paragraph describes. Both sealioning and concern trolling definitely happens, on this site and on others.