Sealioning

Last updated

Sealioning often takes the form of bad-faith attempts to engage in debate under the guise of civility. Sealioning.png
Sealioning often takes the form of bad-faith attempts to engage in debate under the guise of civility.

Sealioning (also sea-lioning and sea lioning) is a type of trolling or harassment that consists of pursuing people with relentless requests for evidence, often tangential or previously addressed, while maintaining a pretense of civility and sincerity ("I'm just trying to have a debate"), and feigning ignorance of the subject matter. [1] [2] [3] [4] It may take the form of "incessant, bad-faith invitations to engage in debate", [5] and has been likened to a denial-of-service attack targeted at human beings. [6] The term originated with a 2014 strip of the webcomic Wondermark by David Malki, [7] which The Independent called "the most apt description of Twitter you'll ever see". [8]

Contents

Description

The sealioner feigns ignorance and politeness while making relentless demands for answers and evidence (while often ignoring or sidestepping any evidence the target has already presented), under the guise of "just trying to have a debate", [1] [2] [4] [9] so that when the target is eventually provoked into an angry response, the sealioner can act as the aggrieved party, and the target presented as closed-minded and unreasonable. [3] [10] [11] It has been described as "incessant, bad-faith invitations to engage in debate". [5] Sealioning can be performed by an individual or by a group acting in concert. [12]

An essay in the collection Perspectives on Harmful Speech Online, published by the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard, noted:

Rhetorically, sealioning fuses persistent questioning—often about basic information, information easily found elsewhere, or unrelated or tangential points—with a loudly-insisted-upon commitment to reasonable debate. It disguises itself as a sincere attempt to learn and communicate. Sealioning thus works both to exhaust a target's patience, attention, and communicative effort, and to portray the target as unreasonable. While the questions of the "sea lion" may seem innocent, they're intended maliciously and have harmful consequences.

— Amy Johnson, Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society (May 2019) [6]

American academic philosopher Walter Sinnott-Armstrong discussed the term in his book Think Again: How to Reason and Argue, saying:

Internet trolls sometimes engage in what is called 'sealioning'. They demand that you keep arguing with them for as long they want you to, even long after you realize that further discussion is pointless. If you announce that you want to stop, they accuse you of being closed-minded or opposed to reason. The practice is obnoxious. Reason should not be silenced, but it needs to take a vacation sometimes.

—  Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Think Again: How to Reason and Argue (June 2018). [13]

Several other academics link or directly describe sealioning as a technique employed by internet trolls. [3] [14] [15] [16]

In December 2020, the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary listed the term as "Words We're Watching", being "words we are increasingly seeing in use but that have not yet met our criteria for entry": [7]

What is Sealioning: 'Sealioning' is a form of trolling meant to exhaust the other debate participant with no intention of real discourse. [7]

In 2021, Canadian magazine Maclean's praised the Merriam-Webster definition saying, "This neologism on Merriam-Webster's list of words to watch aptly describes the frustration of conversing online". [8]

Comparisons

The technique of sealioning has been compared to the Gish gallop and metaphorically described as a denial-of-service attack targeted at human beings (i.e. overloading a target with questions). [6]

In 2022, English philosopher and academic Sophie Grace Chappell likened sealioning to the Socratic term eirōneíā (from which the word irony is derived but with a different end meaning), which she described as an insincere pretense of ignorance as a way to disassemble an argument, saying "[i]n contemporary internet slang, eironeia is «sealioning»." [17] [18]

Origins and history

The Terrible Sea Lion by David Malki (19 September 2014, No. 1062) from which the term "sealioning" originates "The Terrible Sea Lion". Wondermark comic strip No. 1062 by David Malki (19 September 2014).png
The Terrible Sea Lion by David Malki (19 September 2014, No. 1062) from which the term "sealioning" originates

Use of the term originates from a 19 September 2014 strip of the webcomic Wondermark by David Malki titled The Terrible Sea Lion, [21] where a character expresses a dislike of sea lions and a sea lion intrudes to repeatedly ask her to explain her statement and attempts (in an exaggeratedly civil manner) to interrogate her views, following the characters into the privacy of their own home. [8] [22] "Sea lion" was quickly verbed, and noting this, Malki posted on his own Wondermark site, "I'm happy that it's resonated with so many people". [23]

In 2014, Dina Rickman of the online version of The Independent said of Malki's strip, "This comic is the most apt description of Twitter you'll ever see". [8] [20]

The term gained popularity as a way to describe a specific type of online trolling, and it was used to describe some of the behavior of those participating in the Gamergate harassment campaign. [24] [25] [19]

In a 2016 study published in First Monday focusing on users of the Gamergate subreddit /r/KotakuInAction, participants were surveyed about what they believed constituted "harassment". Participants were quoted stating that "expressions of sincere disagreement" were considered harassment by opponents of the forum and that the term sealioning was used to silence legitimate requests for proof. [26]

In 2021, Maclean's compared its origination to other terms derived from comic strips that became common speech such as Brainiac (1958 comic book) and Milquetoast (from the 1924 comic strip). [8] Maclean's noted that Malki had mixed feelings about the term, quoting him as saying: "I didn't set out to coin a phrase. I just wanted to make an observation", and "The core of what I set out to criticize is just the notion that any random patient stranger should feel entitled to as much of someone's attention as they want". [8]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Troll (slang)</span> Person who sows discord online

In slang, a troll is a person who posts deliberately offensive or provocative messages online or who performs similar behaviors in real life. The methods and motivations of trolls can range from benign to sadistic. These messages can be inflammatory, insincere, digressive, extraneous, or off-topic, and may have the intent of provoking others into displaying emotional responses, or manipulating others' perception, thus acting as a bully or a provocateur. The behavior is typically for the troll's amusement, or to achieve a specific result such as disrupting a rival's online activities or purposefully causing confusion or harm to other people. Trolling behaviors involve tactical aggression to incite emotional responses, which can adversely affect the target's well-being.

<i>Marmaduke</i> Comic strip

Marmaduke is a newspaper comic strip revolving around the Winslow family and their Great Dane, Marmaduke, drawn by Brad Anderson from June 1954 to 2015.

Wondermark is a webcomic created by David Malki which was syndicated to Flak Magazine and appeared in The Onion's print edition from 2006 to 2008. It features 19th-century illustrations that have been recontextualized to create humorous juxtapositions. It takes the horizontal four-panel shape of a newspaper strip, although the number of panels varies from one to six or more. It is updated intermittently.

Russian web brigades, also called Russian trolls, Russian bots, Kremlinbots, or Kremlin trolls are state-sponsored anonymous Internet political commentators and trolls linked to the Russian government. Participants report that they are organized into teams and groups of commentators that participate in Russian and international political blogs and Internet forums using sockpuppets, social bots, and large-scale orchestrated trolling and disinformation campaigns to promote pro-Putin and pro-Russian propaganda.

The Gish gallop is a rhetorical technique in which a person in a debate attempts to overwhelm an opponent by presenting an excessive number of arguments, with no regard for their accuracy or strength, with a rapidity that makes it impossible for the opponent to address them in the time available. Gish galloping prioritizes the quantity of the galloper's arguments at the expense of their quality.

Cyberbullying is a form of bullying or harassment using electronic means. Since the 2000s, it has become increasingly common, especially among teenagers and adolescents, due to young people's increased use of social media. Related issues include online harassment and trolling. In 2015, according to cyberbullying statistics from the i–Safe Foundation, over half of adolescents and teens had been bullied online, and about the same number had engaged in cyberbullying. Both the bully and the victim are negatively affected, and the intensity, duration, and frequency of bullying are three aspects that increase the negative effects on both of them.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anita Sarkeesian</span> Canadian-American feminist media critic

Anita Sarkeesian is a Canadian-American feminist media critic. She is the founder of Feminist Frequency, a website that hosts videos and commentary analyzing portrayals of women in popular culture. Her video series Tropes vs. Women in Video Games, examines tropes in the depiction of female video game characters. Media scholar Soraya Murray calls Sarkeesian emblematic of "a burgeoning organized feminist critique" of stereotyped and objectified portrayals of women in video games.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Doxing</span> Publication of the private details of individuals, often on the Internet

Doxing, also spelled doxxing, is the act of publicly providing personally identifiable information about an individual or organization, usually via the Internet and without their consent. Historically, the term has been used to refer to both the aggregation of this information from public databases and social media websites, and the publication of previously private information obtained through criminal or otherwise fraudulent means.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zoë Quinn</span> American video game developer (born 1987)

Zoë Tiberius Quinn is an American video game developer, programmer, and writer. Quinn developed the interactive fiction game Depression Quest, which was released in 2013. In 2014, a blog post by their ex-boyfriend sparked the online harassment campaign known as Gamergate, during which Quinn was subjected to extensive harassment including doxing, rape threats, and death threats. The following year, Quinn co-founded Crash Override, a crisis hotline and resource center for victims of online harassment.

Gamergate or GamerGate (GG) was a loosely organized misogynistic online harassment campaign and a right-wing backlash against feminism, diversity, and progressivism in video game culture. It was conducted using the hashtag "#Gamergate" primarily in 2014 and 2015. Gamergate targeted women in the video game industry, most notably feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian and video game developers Zoë Quinn and Brianna Wu.

Crash Override Network was a support group for victims of large scale online abuse, including revenge porn and doxing.

Social justice warrior (SJW) is a pejorative term and internet meme mostly used for an individual who promotes socially progressive, left-wing or liberal views, including environmentalism, affirmative action, gun control, single payer healthcare, progressive taxation, feminism, abortion, gay and transgender rights, and multiculturalism. The accusation that somebody is an SJW carries implications that they are pursuing personal validation rather than any deep-seated conviction, and engaging in disingenuous arguments.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carl Benjamin</span> British YouTuber and political commentator (born 1979)

Carl Benjamin, also known by his online pseudonym Sargon of Akkad, is a British right-wing YouTuber and political commentator. A former member of the Eurosceptic UK Independence Party (UKIP), he was one of its unsuccessful candidates for the South West England constituency at the 2019 European Parliament election.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sarah Jeong</span> American journalist (born 1988)

Sarah Jeong is an American journalist specializing in information technology law and other technology-related topics. A member of the editorial board of The New York Times from 2018 to 2019, she was formerly a senior writer for The Verge and a contributing editor for Vice Media's Motherboard website. She is the author of The Internet of Garbage, a non-fiction book about online harassment. In 2022, she rejoined The Verge as deputy features editor.

<i>The Internet of Garbage</i> Book by Sarah Jeong

The Internet of Garbage is a 2015 non-fiction book by journalist and lawyer Sarah Jeong. It discusses online harassment as a threat to the useful functions of the internet and argues for new approaches to managing the issue. The book was reissued in 2018 with a new preface by Jeong.

In Internet culture, a Milkshake Duck is a person who gains popularity on social media for some positive trait but is later discovered to have a distasteful history or to engage in offensive behavior. The term has been connected to cancel culture, a trend of social media, sometimes resulting in celebrities being ostracized and careers abruptly derailed by publicized misconduct.

<i>Crash Override</i> (book) 2017 book by Zoë Quinn

Crash Override: How Gamergate (Nearly) Destroyed My Life, and How We Can Win the Fight Against Online Hate is a memoir by indie video game developer Zoë Quinn about their experiences as the target of Gamergate and in countering online abuse.

Comicsgate is an alt-right campaign in opposition to diversity and progressivism in the North American superhero comic book industry. Its proponents target the creators hired, the characters depicted, and the stories told, and argue that these elements have led to a decline in both quality and sales. The name is derived from Gamergate, a similar movement related to video games. Its members present it as a consumer protest, primarily advocating their views on social media; some have produced books intended to reflect the group's values. It is part of the alt-right movement, and has been described by commentators as a harassment campaign which "targets women, people of color, and LGBT folk in the comic book industry". Threats of violence and the vandalism of one store have been attributed to the campaign.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Online gender-based violence</span>

Online gender-based violence is targeted harassment and prejudice through technology against people, disproportionately women, based on their gender. The term is also similar to online harassment, cyberbullying and cybersexism, but the latter terms are not gender-specific. Gender-based violence differs from these because of the attention it draws to discrimination and online violence targeted specifically because of their gender, most frequently those who identify as female. Online gender-based violence can include unwanted sexual remarks, non-consensual posting of sexual media, threats, doxing, cyberstalking and harassment, and gender-based discriminatory memes and posts among other things. Online gender-based violence derives from gender-based violence but it is perpetuated through electronic means. The vulnerable groups include the asexual, bisexual, gay, intersex, trans, intersex, queer, and lesbian. Online gender-based violence may occur through various ways. These include impersonation, hacking, spamming, tracking and surveillance, malicious sharing of intimate messages and photos.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dogpiling (Internet)</span> A form of online harassment

Dogpiling, or dog-piling is a form of online harassment or online abuse characterized by having groups of harassers target the same victim. Examples of online abuse include flaming, doxing, impersonation, and public shaming. Dog-pilers often focus on harassing, exposing, or punishing a target for an opinion that the group does not agree with, or just simply for the sake of being a bully and targeting a victim. Participants use criticism and/or insults to target a single person. In some definitions, it also includes sending private messages.

References

  1. 1 2 Poland, Bailey (November 2016). Haters: Harassment, Abuse, and Violence Online. University of Nebraska Press. pp. 144–145. ISBN   978-1-61234-766-0. Archived from the original on 4 November 2019. Retrieved 10 January 2018.
  2. 1 2 Sarkeesian, Anita (20 February 2015). "Anita Sarkeesian's Guide to Internetting While Female". Marie Claire . Archived from the original on 2 August 2019. Retrieved 2 August 2019.
  3. 1 2 3 Chandler, Daniel; Munday, Rod (2016). Oxford Dictionary of Social Media. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acref/9780191803093.001.0001. ISBN   9780191803093. Sealioning A disparaging term for the confrontational practice of leaping into an online discussion with endless demands for answers and evidence. See also TROLLING
  4. 1 2 Bloomfield, Robert James (2018). "The LAAPs that foster productive conversations and the crebit that undermines them". Accounting, Organizations and Society . 68–69: 135–142. doi:10.1016/j.aos.2018.06.004. S2CID   158687510. Consider a website that seeks to provide a venue for productive conversations among those who own and love cats. Their conversations are likely to be undermined by those who want to foster a preference for dogs (haters), as well as those who simply enjoy undermining conversations for its own sake (trolls). They can expect these haters and trolls to raise faulty arguments about the evils of cats faster than they can be rebutted (the Gish Gallop); to pretend sincerity in asking repeatedly for evidence on the benefits of cats (sealioning)...
  5. 1 2 Sullivan, Emily; Sondag, Max; Rutter, Ignaz; Meulemans, Wouter; Cunningham, Scott; Speckmann, Bettina; Alfano, Mark. "Can Real Social Epistemic Networks Deliver the Wisdom of Crowds?" (pdf). p. 21. Archived from the original on 28 January 2019. Retrieved 28 January 2019– via The PhilPapers Foundation.
  6. 1 2 3 Johnson, Amy (2017). Gasser, Urs (ed.). "The Multiple Harms of Sea Lions" (PDF). Perspectives on Harmful Speech Online. Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. p. 14. Archived (PDF) from the original on 25 September 2018. Retrieved 16 September 2018.
  7. 1 2 3 4 "What is 'Sealioning?' Sea lions can be real trolls sometimes". Merriam-Webster Online . December 2020. Retrieved 5 June 2022.
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Hluchy, Patricia (3 November 2021). "'Sealioning' is the word that sums up why Twitter discussion is so unbearable". Maclean's . Retrieved 5 June 2022.
  9. ↑ Chatfield, Tom (September 2021). How to Think: Your Essential Guide to Clear, Critical Thought. SAGE Publishing. p. 34. ISBN   978-1529727418. To cite just one example, sealioning describes a form of harassment in which a victim is relentlessly asked to provide evidence and reasoning by someone who is hiding behind the excuse 'I'm just trying to have a debate ...
  10. ↑ Lindsay, Jessica (5 July 2018). "Sealioning is the new thing to worry about in relationships and online". Metro . Archived from the original on 31 August 2018. Retrieved 13 September 2018.
  11. ↑ Stokel-Walker, Chris (18 August 2018). "How to handle a troll ... and neuter a sea lion". The Guardian . Archived from the original on 10 January 2019. Retrieved 13 September 2018.
  12. ↑ Shepherd, J. Marshall (17 March 2019). "'Sealioning' Is A Common Trolling Tactic On Social Media—What Is It?". Forbes . Archived from the original on 16 June 2019. Retrieved 16 June 2019.
  13. ↑ Think Again: How to Reason and Argue. Oxford University Press. July 2018. p. 56. ISBN   978-0190627126 . Retrieved 5 June 2022.
  14. ↑ Brown, Amy (November 2019). Informed is best: How to spot fake news about your pregnancy, birth and baby. Pinter & Martin. ISBN   978-1780664903 . Retrieved 5 June 2022. Sealioning is a more subtle and very irritating form of trolling.
  15. ↑ Johnson, Amy (7 March 2019). "'Sealioning' Is A Common Trolling Tactic On Social Media--What Is It?". Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society . Retrieved 5 June 2022.
  16. ↑ Kennedy, Tristan (26 April 2022). ""Don't read the comments": misinformed and malicious comments stifle Indigenous voices". The Conversation . Retrieved 5 June 2022. Sealioning (a special kind of trolling)
  17. ↑ Grace Chappell, Sophie (March 2022). Epiphanies: An Ethics of Experience. Oxford University Press. p. 408. ISBN   978-0192858016. In contemporary internet slang, eironeia is "sealioning"
  18. ↑ Zucca, Diego (May 2022). New Explorations in Plato's Theaetetus: Belief, Knowledge, Ontology, Reception. Brill Academic Publishers. p. 92. ISBN   978-9004516021. In contemporary internet slang, eironeia is «sealioning»
  19. 1 2 Auerbach, David (11 October 2014). "Twitter Is Broken". Slate . Retrieved 26 June 2023.
  20. 1 2 Rickman, Dina (29 September 2014). "This comic is the most apt description of Twitter you'll ever see". Indy100 . Retrieved 6 June 2022.
  21. ↑ "Wondermark #1062". 19 September 2014. Archived from the original on 8 June 2019. Retrieved 3 March 2019.
  22. ↑ Maxwell, Kerry (6 October 2015). "Definition of Sea lion". Macmillan Dictionary . Archived from the original on 11 January 2018. Retrieved 10 January 2018.
  23. ↑ Malki, David (23 October 2014). ""Sea Lion" Has Been Verbed". Wondermark.com. Retrieved 26 June 2023.
  24. ↑ Jhaver, Shagun; Ghoshal, Sucheta; Bruckman, Amy; Gilbert, Eric. "Online Harassment and Content Moderation: The Case of Blocklists". ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction . 25 (2): 12. doi:10.1145/3185593. S2CID   4315029.
  25. ↑ Massanari, Adrienne L. (2016). "'Damseling for Dollars': Toxic Technocultures and Geek Masculinity". In Lind, Rebecca Ann (ed.). Race and Gender in Electronic Media: Content, Context, Culture. Routledge. ISBN   9781317266129. OCLC   948090024. For supporters [of Gamergate], however, the hashtag became an effective way to swarm the mentions of users perceived as not sharing their views, which became known colloquially as 'sea lioning' (Malki, 2014).
  26. ↑ Jhaver, Shagun; Chan, Larry; Bruckman, Amy (5 February 2018). "The view from the other side: The border between controversial speech and harassment on Kotaku in Action". First Monday. 23 (2). arXiv: 1712.05851 . doi: 10.5210/fm.v23i2.8232 . S2CID   3653593. Archived from the original on 21 March 2019. Retrieved 21 March 2019.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.