I’d think so too, but Wiktionary and Urban Dictionary have no entry that means troll-sock, although UD does have a few entries that contain the Trolling part of the portmanteau. And a google search for trock sock troll, or trock sock troll portmanteau doesn’t come up with any relevant hits. Okay, if you put “trock” in quotes I do get 4 pages of results, one of which is actually not from the SDMB-sphere and refers to a troll-sock, but that was from 2021.
This will only be of interest to my fellow Brits, but I every time I read that cartoon about the the sea lion I hear its voice as Jacob Rees-Mogg.
So it might actually have been coined on the Dope and not that long ago.
His official position is “Minister of State for Brexit Opportunities and Government Efficiency”. Poe’s Law in government, reality sounds more like satire than actual satire, which only managed “Minster of State for Administrative Affairs”.
My main issue with the comic is that the woman comes off as a bigot. Because it is a species she doesn’t like, it’s much easier to equate that with a race, ethnicity, or something else about who the person is, not how they act. And it’s no longer automatic to assume that the traits of an individual correspond to the group as a whole, so it didn’t occur to me at least that all sealions act the same way this guy did.
Someone up above replacing sealion with Korean was so close, but then they made it about not knowing why Koreans are bad, rather than the fact it made the person a bigot. And, at that point, the sealion becomes someone who was at least initially justified in pushing that person to state their bigotry out loud.
Another lesser issue is that sealioning never really involves people talking among themselves and a stranger interjecting themselves into the conversation. These were always conversations in public made for public consumption. And, yes, if you say something disparaging about someone in public, there is at least the idea that said person should be able to confront you.
While the persistent nature and insistence that harassing someone is “polite” was obvious from the comic, I had to have the rest of it explained to me to figure out exactly what was being alleged. The disingenuousness of the question wasn’t clear to me.
That’s not to blame the comic: it wasn’t intended to create a new term after all. It was a comic made at a specific time with a specific context. People had much more familiarity with the tactics of the people represented by “sealion,” and understood it. But I do tend to think that it’s better to give a definition of sealioning first and then show the comic as part of explaining the origin.
Once again, I think this is another example of hugely overthinking the intent of a simple comic. I simply see it as a depiction of the fact that there exists on the internet a species of poster who is willfully obnoxious and whose primary intent is to be annoying and to rile people up – i.e.- essentially a classic troll – but one that has refined the special technique of cloaking the trolling in an affected veneer of civility in order to avoid detection. Sea-lioning is mainly identifiable by unrelenting persistence in the demand for cites and explanations even when they’ve been provided numerous times, thereby disrupting the discussion among legitimate posters.
What I’m pointing out is that bad-faith questions are not the sine qua non of sealioning. It could be questioning, or it could be a tempting bait topic that begs for correction. For example, if one states that one isn’t a racist, and then lays out a meticulously rationalized set of racist beliefs, and offers to debate them civilly and exhaustively, one can attract endless attention to himself like flies to honey.
Remember, that cartoon was not meant to be an example of the behavior we call sealioning. The term comes from that cartoon, but the behavior existed before.
It is a good, fun cartoon, sure and it is the trope-namer, but let us not take it literally as an example of the internet sealioning behavior.
That’s got nothing to do with what @k9bfriender said. It is true that the cartoon was not meant to describe a named behavior. It is also true that the behavior the sea lion exhibits is exactly why the speaker dislikes sea lions. No other interpretation makes sense.
Excellent! I’ll bring the fishhooks and the very large net.
Has anyone bothered to read David Malki’s clarification of the cartoon on the Wondermark site?
#1062; The Terrible Sea Lion
It has been suggested that the couple in this comic, and the woman in particular, are bigots for making a pejorative statement about a species of animal, and then refusing to justify their statements. It has been further suggested that they be read as overly privileged, because they are dressed fancily, have a house, a motor-car, etc. This is, I suppose, a valid read of the comic, if taken as written.But often, in satire such as this, elements are employed to stand in for other, different objects or concepts. Using animals for this purpose has the effect of allowing the point (which usually is about behavior) to stand unencumbered by the connotations that might be suggested if a person is portrayed in that role — because all people are members of some social group or other, even if said group identity is not germane to the point being made.
Such is the case with this comic. The sea lion character is not meant to represent actual sea lions, or any actual animal. It is meant as a metaphorical stand-in for human beings that display certain behaviors. Since behaviors are the result of choice, I would assert that the woman’s objection to sea lions — which, if the metaphor is understood, is read as actually an objection to human beings who exhibit certain behaviors — is not analogous to a prejudice based on race, species, or other immutable characteristics.
My apologies if the use of a metaphorical sea lion in this strip, rather than a human being making conscious choices about their own behavior, was in any way confusing.
As for their attire: everyone in Wondermark dresses like that.
I first came across that one in a now defunct board back in the '90s.
We made it up, goddammit, even if we didn’t.
Pretty sure Scott Adams mentioned the term in one of his Dilbert books back in the mid-1990s or so too, but I may be misremembering. It’s not a “new” term, at any rate.
Thanks. So the author agrees with those of us who have commented that on its face the comic can easily be interpreted to mean something other than what he intended. And in exactly the way we noted - that the woman is bigoted against a class, rather than objecting to a pattern of behavior.
The author agrees - in the mildest way possible - that if you take the work at face value and completely ignore context, satire, and metaphor, then it is (he supposes) a valid read of the comic.
I can’t speak for others, but I’m fairly sure that nobody has proposed a non-satirical interpretation of a sea lion following people around their house pestering them.
And “ignore” metaphor? Are you suggesting that someone is interpreting this comic as making a point about actual sea lions? The point is that it can easily be interpreted as a metaphor for something else. When he wanted a metaphor for disliking a pattern of behavior rather than a metaphor for bigotry against a class of people, “I dislike sea lions” was at best an ambiguous choice, as he concedes. I think it was a poor choice.
And here you’re making my point for me. A comic that requires context beyond common knowledge to understand the point it’s making is not an effective comic.
The mildest way possible would be to not write a long post apologizing for the fact that your comic is confusing.
…I never accused you of sealioning. I never thought you were beng insincere. And you weren’t “framing the issue with the comic in the form of a couple of questions”: you were demanding that I defend an assertion that I never, ever made.
I’m mean, people can read. I don’t particularly care whether it was technically an insinuation or an accusation, but it was amusingly ironic in context.
…people can read. And they can see you demanding I defend an assertion that I never made. And they can see where I asked you this:
And you responded with this:
I had no intention of jumping back into this thread, but your summary of our interactions was imprecise. Please stop doing that.
Thanks in advance.