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I'll give you a huge one.
Purity tests (when cosplaying as liberals). If a person isn't super-duper liberal on every single issue then you can't support them.
There's tons of this on this very site. People who will tell you they'll stay home and not vote for someone, if they only support 80% of what they seemingly want. People see this, then emulate said behavior.
Somehow, liberals would rather get 0% of what they want instead of 50% because of the missed 30% that the candidate doesn't support.
Motte and bailey.
There is a series "The Alt Right Playbook" that covers a lot of bad faith and manipulative tactics, many of which are used online.
I hate the one where you call them a fascist (because they literally are) and then they come around and call you a "blue MAGA".
like bitch, if I was "blue MAGA" I'd be making IEDs and forcing abortions on women and shit. ain't nobody got time for that. I'm building a garden so I can fuckin eat this year.
Strawmanning because they won't or can't understand your argument, mistaking the map for the place usually because of equivocating on vaguely understood or multiple definitions, non-sequetor this is where someone just yaps for awhile based on the crap that falls out of their head based on the words they heard but didn't get the point and is barely tracking
There's another type I see often here with these kinds of assholes. It's intentionally misconstruing or reaching the wrong conclusions about what the other person is saying. It's a form of strawmanning. They'll move the argument just a bit to the side, drop a false zinger that could fit the original narrative if you squint hard enough, and accuse you of saying or doing horrible shit when in reality you're saying something else.
And guess what, the people reading do not give a shit. They'll just dogpile if you try to fight it because Lemmy is wonderful like that and people here are so nice and critical.
Nice try, Elon
Online arguements take ten times the energy to put in than to exit out, any well thought arguement could be shut down just by ignoring it, or making up reasons to avoid confronting it (whataboutism for example)
Nuh uh
Fuck
I see ad hominem very often as well as strawmanning. Specifically on lemmy people will say tankie/auth or irl they'll say woke/liberal and then use those insults to further strawman argumenents. Specifically multiple times I have said "hey I voted Kamala but her policies deeply concern me", and people responded with "Uhh how dare you not vote Kamala and openly declare you hate democracy, freedom, and trans people".
The other way happens as well. You can say you voted harris because its the lesser of 2 evils, then someone calls you genocider... 🤦♂️
Like, people forget how FPTP systems work.
Or I can say that I voted Kamala and I still hate that she supported genocide and get called a tankie.
What you need to keep in mind is that it's not just voting, it's also campaigning. If you're a citizen who has opinions you share with your friends, that's one thing. If you own a large online community that consistently puts out propaganda, that's another thing. That's campaigning. Voting for a candidate while campaigning against that same candidate is an action that confuses other people, because it's self-defeating.
I have never seen an online discussion where gaslighting was used. People usually just learned the term and they think it's a synonym for lying.
It wasn't a nazi salute, he was just waving
Gaslighting could take the form of saying "my political team would never do [the thing]." Their political team subsequently does [the thing]. Then claiming they never said the original statement. Sometimes they're even so fucking stupid as to leave that comment visible so you can just screenshot it and ask "this you?"
... ask me how I know.
How is that not just lying?
Gaslighting (if my understanding is correct) is manipulating someone. Making someone question their own sanity, blaming them, isolating from other people and making them dependent on you.
Lying on the internet to win a stupid argument with a stranger hardly can even start to measure to that.
From my example, the part where they claim to have not made the argument is what I'd consider gaslighting. My understanding of gaslighting is any attempt to make someone question reality. So the reality is they definitely said one thing. When that goes wrong, they claim to have never said it. It's a tool of someone who manipulates.
Then almost any blatant lie would be gaslighting, which I don't think fits the meaning. My understanding is there are more necessary attributes for a situation to be "gaslighting", mainly the manipulation and dependency.
If someone lies about what they said in writing (in the age of internet archive of all things) it's just a plain lie, and a dumb one at that.
Basically every step of the narcissists prayer is attempted gaslighting
That didn't happen. And if it did, it wasn't that bad. And if it was, that's not a big deal. And if it is, that's not my fault. And if it was, I didn't mean it. And if I did, you deserved it.
Narcissus was so hard done by. The guy clearly was not interested in pursuing a relationship, but everyone was still asking him out all the time. That's harassment. Rhamnusia shouldn't have answered Ameinias' prayer for vengeance. She should have just told Ameinias to get over it and stop staking his self worth on a guy who isn't interested.
That's the problem with relying on slang instead of real conversation. The desire to process our social media feeds as fast and with as little typing as possible means we encapsulate complex issues into ridiculously overgeneralized shorhand. We take in minimal information about each item, apply minimal quality control (mostly our own prejudices), use minimal thought to arrive at value judgements that make us feel morally impeccable, and spit out condensed replies. It's superficial hillbilly-grade communication with a delusion of being informed, involved and enlightened.
No we don't! /s
Cherry picking is probably one of the most egregious
You can make a university-level essay on a subject, and people will identify one tiny irrelevant detail they disagree with and ignore the overall point
Cherry pick and move the goal post.
For example:
University-level essays? You know for-profit universities exist, right? If you don't have a masters degree on the subject, then you have no right to speak on the topic.
Appeal to Fallacy.
It might not be a fallacy.
A fallacy doesn't make an argument wrong.
There are degrees of fallacies.
Claiming a statement is wrong because there might be a fallacy is a thought-ending argument. There's more nuance and relatability in rhetoric. Refusing to engage because someone's using a fallacy is reasonable, but calling it by name isn't a magic spell that forces someone to throw in the towel.
This is a good one. The use of fallacies doesn't necessarily void an argument, it just fails to support it logically.
For example, I could craft a perfect, clean, cold-cut argument so water-tight and beautiful that even ben-fucking-shapiro would have a come-to-jesus. Calling my opponent a "dickhead" at the end (ad hominem) doesn't prove anything, but it doesn't nullify the entire rest of the argument either. Plus it's fun.
I agree, an argument can be a narrative, too. One where the second person is a dickhead.
False dichotomy - Assuming that because someone doesn’t agree with one viewpoint, they must fully support the opposite. Framing the issue as if there are only two mutually exclusive positions, when in fact there may be many shades in between.
Strawmanning - Misrepresenting someone’s argument - usually by exaggerating, distorting, or taking it out of context - so it’s easier to attack or refute.
Ad hominem - Attacking the character, motives, or other traits of the person making the argument rather than addressing the substance of the argument itself.
Reductionism - The tendency to reduce every complex issue to a single cause - like blaming everything on capitalism, fascism, patriarchy, etc. - while ignoring other contributing factors.
Moving the goalposts - Changing the criteria of an argument or shifting its focus once the original point has been addressed or challenged - usually to avoid conceding.
Hasty generalizations - Treating entire groups as if they’re uniform, attributing a trait or behavior of some individuals to all members of that group.
Oversimplification - Ignoring the nuance and complexity inherent in most issues, reducing them to overly simple terms or black-and-white thinking.
Online debate is a waste of time. You can somewhat short-circuit the bad-faith stuff by arguing values instead of facts or policy.
For example, if you say that the State has no right to remove trans kids from their parents, you've made a legal argument that's vulnerable to all the bad faith and you may even be technically wrong. However if you argue that you trust parents to decide what's best over the State, there is nothing to argue about. Bonus, you might actually get some real talk out of reactionaries.
So let me ask you something. We all know that a big part of shaping public opinion online is simply just being exposed to an opinion repeated over and over again. Like when someone says something and then has multiple rebuttals that are similar. Or like when we read an opinion over and over again that is not contested. Given what you said, how do we make headway in shaping opinions publicly by disengaging and allowing their opinions to freely go uncontested. If online debate is a waste of time, why are the just powerful and richest people investing in shaping it while you tell others to disengage
Moving the goalposts.
Butwhatabout.
Appeal to hypocrisy is big.
I thought it was called "whataboutism"?
Yeah, same thing.
Barney-Rubbing
I misread and had so many questions about Barney the big purple dinosaur.
These are nonsense words
Here is a great piece someone put together a while ago which goes through many of the techniques bad actors use.
