• Lvxferre
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    9 months ago

    A big component of sealioning, as I think you’ve pointed out, is one party pretending to not understand the intent or argument behind your reasoning and rephrasing it in a way to make it sound ridiculous, but in the form of a question.

    Yup. That’s called a strawman. Strawmen are really common when sealioning, as they increase the effort necessary for a meaningful reply - because first you’ll need to dismantle the strawman, then counter-argument.

    It isn’t a key component though. You can achieve the same effect through a red herring, tu/ille quoque (aka what-about-ism), or even a false dichotomy.