Sealioning
Sealioning (also spelled sea-lioning and sea lioning) is a type of trolling or harassment which consists of pursuing people with persistent requests for evidence or repeated questions, while maintaining a pretense of civility.[1][2][3] It may take the form of "incessant, bad-faith invitations to engage in debate".[4]
Contents
DescriptionEdit
The troll feigns ignorance and politeness, so that if the target is provoked into making an angry response, the troll can then act as the aggrieved party.[5][6] Sealioning can be performed by a single troll or by multiple ones acting in concert. The technique of sealioning has been compared to the Gish gallop and metaphorically described as a denial-of-service attack targeted at human beings.[7]
In a series of essays published under Perspectives on Harmful Speech Online, the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard, noted:
Rhetorically, sealioning fuses persistent questioning—often about basic information, information on easily found elsewhere, or unrelated or tangential points—with a loudly-insisted-upon commitment to reasonable debate. It disguises itself as a sincere attempt to learn and communicate. Sealioning thus works both to exhaust a target's patience, attention, and communicative effort, and to portray the target as unreasonable. While the questions of the "sea lion" may seem innocent, they're intended maliciously and have harmful consequences.
— Amy Johnson, Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society (May 2019)[7]
OriginsEdit
The term originated with a 2014 strip of the webcomic Wondermark by David Malki,[8] where a character expresses a dislike of sea lions and a sea lion intrudes to repeatedly ask the character to explain.[9] "Sea lion" was quickly verbed, the term gained popularity as a way to describe online trolling, and it was used to describe some of the behavior of those participating in the Gamergate controversy.[10][11]
See alsoEdit
- Argumentum ad nauseam - A more general term for an argument that has continued past the point of value
- Griefer
ReferencesEdit
- ^ Poland, Bailey (November 2016). Haters: Harassment, Abuse, and Violence Online. University of Nebraska Press. pp. 144–145. ISBN 978-1-61234-766-0.
- ^ Sarkeesian, Anita (20 February 2015). "Anita Sarkeesian's Guide to Internetting While Female". Marie Claire. Archived from the original on 2 August 2019. Retrieved 2 August 2019.
- ^ Chandler, Daniel; Munday, Rod (3 March 2016). A Dictionary of Social Media. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780192518521. OCLC 952388585.
- ^ Sullivan, E.; Sondag, M.; Rutter, I.; Meulemans, W.; Cunningham, S.; Speckmann, B.; Alfano, M. "Can Real Social Epistemic Networks Deliver the Wisdom of Crowds?" (pdf). p. 21. Retrieved 28 January 2019 – via The PhilPapers Foundation.
- ^ Lindsay, Jessica (5 July 2018). "Sealioning is the new thing to worry about in relationships and online". Metro.co.uk. Retrieved 13 September 2018.
- ^ Stokel-Walker, Chris (18 August 2018). "How to handle a troll ... and neuter a sea lion". The Guardian. Retrieved 13 September 2018.
- ^ a b Johnson, Amy (2017). Gasser, Urs (ed.). "The Multiple Harms of Sea Lions" (PDF). Perspectives on Harmful Speech Online. Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. p. 14. Retrieved 16 September 2018.
- ^ "Wondermark #1062". 19 September 2014. Retrieved 3 March 2019.
- ^ Maxwell, Kerry (6 October 2015). "Definition of Sea lion". Macmillan Dictionary. Retrieved 10 January 2018.
- ^ Jhaver, Shagun; Ghoshal, Sucheta; Bruckman, Amy; Gilbert, Eric. "Online Harassment and Content Moderation: The Case of Blocklists". ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction. 25 (2): 12. doi:10.1145/3185593.
- ^ Massanari, Adrienne L. (2016). "'Damseling for Dollars': Toxic Technocultures and Geek Masculinity". In Lind, Rebecca Ann (ed.). Race and Gender in Electronic Media: Content, Context, Culture. Routledge. ISBN 9781317266129. OCLC 948090024.
For supporters [of Gamergate], however, the hashtag became an effective way to swarm the mentions of users perceived as not sharing their views, which became known colloquially as 'sea lioning' (Malki, 2014).
External linksEdit
- The Terrible Sea Lion, the Wondermark comic strip that inspired the term
- Wondermark Errata defending the cartoon against accusations of classism and speciesism.
- Sealioning (online communication), Quora
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