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[WARNING: seriously off-topic comment, I was triggered] Here's what sea-lioned means to me: I say something. You accuse me of sea-lioning. I have two choice

[WARNING: seriously off-topic comment, I was triggered] Here's what sea-lioned means to me: I say something. You accuse me of sea-lioning. I have two choices: attempt to refute the sea-lioning, which becomes sea-lioning, or allowing your accusation to stand unchallenged, which appears to most people as a confirmation of some kind that I was sea-lioning. It is a nuclear weapon launched at discussion. It isn't that it doesn't describe a phenomena that actually happens in the world. However, it is a response/accusation to which there is never any way to respond to that doesn't confirm the accusation, whether it was true or not. It is also absolutely rooted in what appears to me to be a generational distinction: it seems that a bunch of younger people consider it to be a right to speak "in public" (i.e in any kind of online context where people who do not know you can read what you wrote) and expect to avoid a certain kind of response. Should that response arise? Various things will be said about the responder, including "sea-lioning". My experience is that people who were online in the 80s and 90s find this expectation somewhere between humorous and ridiculous, and that people who went online somewhere after about 2005 do not. Technologically, it seems to reflect a desire among many younger people for "private-public spaces". In the absence of any such actual systems really existing (at least from their POV), they believe they ought to be able to use very non-private public spaces (facebook, insta, and everything else under the rubric of "social media") as they wish to, rather than as the systems were designed. They are communicating with their friends and the fact that their conversations are visible is not significant. Thus, when a random stranger responds to their not-private-public remarks ... sea-lioning. We used to have more systems that were sort-of-private-public spaces - mailing lists being the most obvious. I sympathize with a generation that clearly wants more of these sorts of spaces to communicate with friends, but I am not sympathetic to their insistence that corporate creations that are not just very-much-non-private-public spaces but also essentially revenue generators should work the way they want them to.

shermantanktop 9mo ago
That’s not what sealioning is at all. The rest of your generational rant is whatever it is, but sealioning is pretty well defined: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning If I repeated asked you for data to support your generalizations (“which younger people? Do you have an example? Why 2005 and not 2010?”) without admitting outright that I disagreed with you, that would be sealioning. If you are being accused of sealioning, and you have 1) stated your opinion and 2) are asking good-faith questions in an effort to actually understand, then you’re probably not doing it. OTOH if that happens a lot, you might be the problem without realizing it.
- PaulDavisThe1st 9mo ago
  I know both the cartoon and the wikipage. My interpretation of what is in the cartoon and on that page differs from yours a little. The critical part of sealioning from my perspective is not "repeatedly asking for data to support the position, without outright admitting disagreement", because that is common in other contexts where it is applauded. This is how debates at scientific conferences (or in other contexts) happen, much of the time. It's how debate and discussion happen online sometimes, and is frequently seen as appropriate and even welcome. The specific thing that the cartoon gets at is that the questioner was not invited into the conversation (c.f. the "You're in my house") frame. They take a position that they have a right to ask questions, when the other person/people involved did not invite them to be participants in the exchange at all. The people in the house do not consider their conversation about sealions to be public; the sealion does, and responds.
  - shermantanktop 9mo ago
    Out here in the wide seas of the internet, I’m not sure what the equivalent of those house walls are. They presumably demarcate an expectation of either privacy or a clear division between participants and observers. I think those are just private chats.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 9mo ago
      If it was truly a private chat, there is no sealion. That's why my perspective on this is that it is precisely about the expectation of privacy (even when in a factually non-private context), or as you note a clear division between participants and observers. And that's why I think there's a cohort/age-based aspect to this: early users of the internet never had any concept of privacy in general, other than for email.

shermantanktop 9mo ago

That’s not what sealioning is at all. The rest of your generational rant is whatever it is, but sealioning is pretty well defined: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning If I repeated asked you for data to support your generalizations (“which younger people? Do you have an example? Why 2005 and not 2010?”) without admitting outright that I disagreed with you, that would be sealioning. If you are being accused of sealioning, and you have 1) stated your opinion and 2) are asking good-faith questions in an effort to actually understand, then you’re probably not doing it. OTOH if that happens a lot, you might be the problem without realizing it.

PaulDavisThe1st 9mo ago
I know both the cartoon and the wikipage. My interpretation of what is in the cartoon and on that page differs from yours a little. The critical part of sealioning from my perspective is not "repeatedly asking for data to support the position, without outright admitting disagreement", because that is common in other contexts where it is applauded. This is how debates at scientific conferences (or in other contexts) happen, much of the time. It's how debate and discussion happen online sometimes, and is frequently seen as appropriate and even welcome. The specific thing that the cartoon gets at is that the questioner was not invited into the conversation (c.f. the "You're in my house") frame. They take a position that they have a right to ask questions, when the other person/people involved did not invite them to be participants in the exchange at all. The people in the house do not consider their conversation about sealions to be public; the sealion does, and responds.
- shermantanktop 9mo ago
  Out here in the wide seas of the internet, I’m not sure what the equivalent of those house walls are. They presumably demarcate an expectation of either privacy or a clear division between participants and observers. I think those are just private chats.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 9mo ago
    If it was truly a private chat, there is no sealion. That's why my perspective on this is that it is precisely about the expectation of privacy (even when in a factually non-private context), or as you note a clear division between participants and observers. And that's why I think there's a cohort/age-based aspect to this: early users of the internet never had any concept of privacy in general, other than for email.