I think the most common thing I see online and offline is constantly adding more sources to the discussion to the point that the other person feels they can’t know anything. My grandmother does this with her nonsense and pseudo-intellectual books. Just because I haven’t read “why inner city black people have guns 3” doesn’t mean I can’t not be a racist.
this post was submitted on 17 May 2025
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Yeah, feels like a form of gish galloping
Flooding the zone (which now that I think about it is close enough to gish-galloping for there not to be much of a distinction), whataboutism, and moving the goalposts are all extremely common.
Whataboutism and moving the goalposts are the ones I see most often.
Using a wedge issue as a universal bludgeon to attack anyone that disagrees with them.
Not sure what technique that's called. Concern troll, possibly?
Also, vote manipulation. Basically they spin up a bunch of alts across different instances and boost/demote posts and comments in an attempt to steer discourse toward their agenda.
Concern troll is, as I understand it, more directly faking concern for a person. Things like "Are you okay? Do you need to talk to someone?"because you rebutted their argument, or "Suicide/self harm are never the answer" because you posted an opinion they disagree with. Sometimes it even rises to the point of reporting comments as self harm in a way that gets an automated or admin response.
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Here's a handy guide to help.
Why do we not have some brilliant mind just fully memorize all of the ins and outs of how these arise and just crush bad faith arguments by simply labeling them in real time rather than engaging with them?
Like, if framed correctly "I don't engage in logical fallacy. I will immediately call it out, move on, and go back to the relevant topic."
"Oh you don't care about starving children?"
"That's an appeal to emotion. I won't engage with this obvious logical fallacy. I will address the causes of children suffering to alleviate their suffering."
"But the cause is illegal immigrants!!!"
"That's a strawman. I won't engage with logical fallacies. If you'd like to have a discussion about solving problems, Im all ears, but until we're done pointing fingers, this conversation is over."
That's a tactic I've seen widely used, especially by the assholes we are talking about.
Words have meaning to us, and fascists love that because they are not beholden to any truth at all.
It's actually somewhat effective in my experience. Another thing I've recently started doing is calling out mean comments. Nobody wants to think of themselves as a mean person but it's quite difficult accusation to argue against when the evidence is right there in front of their face.
Be the change you want to see:) Really, though, it'll take all of us calling these out.
To be clear, almost every argument contains a fallacy in it. Having a fallacy in an argument only introduces the possibility of it being wrong, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's wrong.
An example of a valid argument is like:
P1: Socrates is a man P2: All men are mortal C: Socrates is mortal
The conclusion is guaranteed to be correct if the premises are correct. Most scientific arguments are technically invoking a fallacy or are invalid in some way, due to the extrapolation from an experiment in lab conditions to a more general conclusion.
You're conflating two separate ideas.
A valid arguent needn't any logical fallacy.
Edit: You're talking about syllogisms? I think? But like that's tangential to my point. See my new post addressing your other inaccuracies.
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What do you call someone who is convinced you are something you aren't, based on only a couple words in a comment on a post, draws wild assumptions from that and no actual knowledge and demands you prove them wrong otherwise, they think, they win? Like I'm going to give you my resume to prove I'm not what you think I am? Nope
Come on, no one's ever overwhelmed you in bad faith online.
Mort and Bailey, when they'll have a weak argument and a much stronger argument, they get you to attack the weak argument, and then they retreat to the stronger, more limited argument.
It's a "motte" FYI
Asking the same question over and over for years...
Then just JAGing off (just asking questions) till the other person gets tired of explaining.
Like, if people want to insist on rehashing something from over a decade ago despite it being settled history at this point.
They don't want to actually discuss it, they have an opinion they agree with, and want to scream at someone for valuing facts more than their opinion
There's some good examples and discussion here https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJA_jUddXvY7v0VkYRbANnTnzkA_HMFtQ
I love Innuendo Studio's stuff. Such a bummer that he's most likely quitting.
How about asking why you lose the argument instead of trying to label all this crap.
It's like you're watching your 12th "how to build a full stack application" video while they've already finished their 2nd project.
End of the day what they use to succeed is effort. We don't. Look at the answers here telling you it's pointless to engage. That's why they succeed online. Those people
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