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] The troll pretends ignorance and feigns 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.[7] 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]
Contents
OriginsEdit
The term originated with a 2014 strip of the webcomic Wondermark, where a character expresses a dislike of sea lions and a sea lion intrudes to repeatedly ask the character to explain.[8] "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 supporters of the Gamergate controversy.[9][10]
See alsoEdit
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 (2015-02-20). "Anita Sarkeesian's Guide to Internetting While Female". Marie Claire. Retrieved 2018-01-11.
- ^ Chandler, Daniel; Munday, Rod (2016-03-03). 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 (2018-07-05). "Sealioning is the new thing to worry about in relationships and online". Metro.co.uk. Retrieved 2018-09-13.
- ^ Stokel-Walker, Chris (2018-08-18). "How to handle a troll … and neuter a sea lion". The Guardian. Retrieved 2018-09-13.
- ^ 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 2018-09-16.
- ^ Maxwell, Kerry (2015-10-06). "Definition of Sea lion". Macmillan Dictionary. Retrieved 2018-01-10.
- ^ 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. 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.
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