3 ms·

...by using the latest, greatest new term to shut down debate and avoid addressing the concept of being intellectually honest.

• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• bduerst 9y ago
  Whataboutism isn't new, nor is it intellectually dishonest to point out when it's being used. Soviets started using it during the cold war era, and it's still in use as a deflection tactic today.
  • eric_h 9y ago
    > Whataboutism isn't new You are absolutely correct, however I would argue that it has only relatively recently entered the common HN lexicon. The vast majority (~675 out of 704^) of comments using it here in the comments are < 2 yrs old. Admittedly the first comment on HN that used the term is 7 years old, but that comment [0] predates the creation of the wikipedia article (frequently trotted out when invoking the term here) by about a year. As an aside, I'd love see a dataviz app that shows the lifecycle of terminology and memes that thrive in various internet discussion boards. 0) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2944345 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2944345 ^well it'll be 705 including this post ;)
    • bduerst 9y ago
      Interesting timeframe on increased usage on HN. That may be correlated with the current president of the United States using it frequently: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism#Use_by_Donald_Trump https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism#Use_by_Donald_T... Again, that still doesn't make it new or intellectually dishonest to point out.