This community is going to be the most addictive rage bait for me... Lemmy will prove fruitful content grounds.
this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2025
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A community for posting examples of sealioning and similar forms of trolling
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70 users here now
Rules:
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pls obscure all usernames!
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This is not a community for trolls. this is a community for raising awareness of these types of trolls and how they operate.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning
Sealioning (also sea-lioning and sea lioning) is a type of trolling or harassment that consists of pursuing people with relentless requests for evidence, often tangential or previously addressed, while maintaining a pretense of civility and sincerity ("I'm just trying to have a debate"), and feigning ignorance of the subject matter.[5][6][7][8] It may take the form of "incessant, bad-faith invitations to engage in debate",[9] and has been likened to a denial-of-service attack targeted at human beings.[10] The term originated with a 2014 strip of the webcomic Wondermark by David Malki,[1] which The Independent called "the most apt description of Twitter you'll ever see".[2]
Sealions are adorable animals. the trolls, not so much. If you see an example of sealioning, feel free to post it here!
Quick example would be something like a person saying "the US is currently ran by a fascist who supports genocide", which is referring to Donald Trump supporting Israel. The sealion will reply with "who? What genocide?" the sealion knows what the person means but pursues them for relentless requests of evidence as a way of trying to waste the person's time. recognising sealioning is the most effective means of dealing with them
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TIL about sealioning. This happened to me the other day in-game. Though it only got 1 rotation before I blocked them. Not about to waste my leisure time on this.
Me too, although I knew it well, just not that it has a name. Good to know.
But in my experience it often happens that people that actually don't know much about a subject and they might be sincere in their questions, but at the point where their preconceived notion would be challenged, they go into this sealioning thing
For those types it feels like a broken record. Some part of them wants to understand and be challenged but their pride/programming overrides it and they get stuck in a loop for stupidity.
Some are just assholes. I blocked the person earlier after they they asked for an explanation about why Trump's policies on immigration are any worse than Obama's saying they were genuinely curious, after I responded with as objective of an explanation I got hit with the "oh honey that's wrong" lol.
Yeah... I think it's pointless to engage online, just so many trolls, so much ai, ... I still fall for it sometimes lol
It's really frustrating how they just ignore everything said.
Yup, that's part of the tactic. they aren't actually interested in having their mind changed or having a reasonable discussion. it's like a DDOS attack targeted at a person
It doesn't work on me because I don't believe my communication methods have flaws so I'm just like "scroll up and reread what I wrote idiot"
IDK, I do feel like the "can you define those terms and give examples" is a pretty clear tee-up to define those terms and list the incredibly abundant examples that exist for each one.
I'm not real hopeful that sealion-graphic would have taken the point and all of a sudden started making sense (it sounds like they're pretty deep into a propaganda bubble) but I do think it's a fair question and an invitation to start making the arguments concrete. It's hard to understand just how little grasp of what's really going on the average Trump supporter has; they live almost entirely within a fantasy-world created by the media they consume.
The guy doesn't really have to be arguing in bad faith, he is just deluded. Somewhere out there is a writing by someone who was deeply religious until talking on the internet and having their beliefs challenged eventually (after quite a while) snapped them out of it, which I think is exactly how it can work for the Trump people.
i think you might be overestimating the average maga cultist's capacity to come around and admit they've been dead wrong this whole time. people get their entire lives wrecked and turn around and say "yea this is awful, but i don't regret voting for trump!!"
Some people, yes. Some other people change their minds.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/natashajokic1/trump-voters-are-regretting-their-ballot-choices
I don't really know what the percentage is. I do think that talking to people and giving them a chance (at least for a little while, you don't have to expend unlimited energy on it) to become some of the right side of the percentage is a decent thing to do.