Ask Lemmy

While I think some people have felt that there are existing terms that fit more broadly, my vote for a brand new term to address it would be "pulling for false victims". I added the word "false", because in some contexts pulling for more victims using full, detailed context is a perfectly legitimate strategy to fight a larger power. (For instance, one woman who's been harassed by an employer could talk to other women in the workplace about it, and find that there's a large group of women all suffering that harassment. If it's not using deceptive interpretations, it can achieve justice for an affected group)

It was also interesting to see in comments how much of the discourse turned to race. It's possible I misplanned the example by using "blue hair", since that's an element of birth identity much like being black or a woman. As a result, a lot of the conversation went deliberately to just how bad "Bob" is, with the direct allegory being something like "That damned black kid". But, it's also interesting how much people center on that, since they view social issues as naturally receiving less attention than obvious ills like robbing an orphanage, and want to champion that highlighting. Part of what I was trying to show, but didn't do a good job of, is how many aspects can be a part of someone's identity beyond their circumstances of birth. As a gamer, "gamer" is an easy one, but political affiliation, hobbies, or even just owners of a certain kind of product could be used for this deceptive political movement. These descriptors are more likely to be brought up in mention, or even specific targeting; which can provide bad actors more ways to use the fallacy.

I see a lot of potential avenues by which malicious actors can "pull for false victims", which is why the subject intrigued me. Picture, for instance, a Democratic senator who sees Republicans vote against sane gun legislation, and claim "Republicans just want to see kids die in schools!" in reference to those senators. Even if this laments NRA influence, it's unfortunately common in American politics to inherit political affiliation to one's identity, so even if a Republican voter is a gun owner in favor of reasonable gun regulation, the Republican senator may present that quote as a warning sign, causing the voter to believe that Democrats directly hate him, not his representatives, and/or are being ignorant of that Republican's own letters of support for gun regulation.

The kicker is comments here in which the very trick plays out in full, without a whole lot of intentional effort. People used to seeing social injustice may hear a very, very short quote and believe they understand the full context of it, "pulling for false victims" themselves. Admittedly, during made-up internet examples, there's no way to research further, but there are also real-world cases where the subject is so obscure, the only released information is that of a deceitful actor, with no "lengthy explanation" available to correct for context. The only full safeguard would be to come away from partial information with questions and no concrete opinions; though it'd also make sense to bear strong suspicion towards a journalist or user that would release a photo or quote with no idea where it came from or why.