The Sealioning Comic (original source matl)

In My Humble Opinion
1

From the OP on the concurrent Sealioning thread, this comic strip is identified as the source of the concept and term.

I do not wish to post about Sealioning itself. And I’m able to grasp the concept from the comic strip. I have in fact been sealioned a few times myself.

But IMO, the comic panel not a very good illustration of the behavior to which it has given a name. The humans in the strip do not at any point make any kind of explanation for objecting to sea lions, and neither will they retract their original statement. Admittedly it’s a mild enough statement (“I could do without sea lions”), albeit mildly worsened by what came immediately before it (“I don’t mind most marine mammals” – hence I do “mind” sea lions). And admittedly the sea lion is objectionably tenacious.

But it is my understanding that what we call “sealioning” is the superficially reasonable and polite insistence on backing up one’s statements when the “sea lion” is actually doing one or more of the following, none of which are well-conveyed in the comic strip:

  • rejecting each and every backup cite or elaboration as inadequate and keeps asking for more justification for the original assertion

  • demanding evidence or an unpacking or a cite for simple everyday observations that should not normally need supportive evidence

  • repeatedly asserting that in the absence of the original assertion being backed up in that manner, some contrary truth is self-evidently the real truth of the matter instead, AND the person making the original assertion is participating in bad faith and in a reprehensible manner.
    The second half of that last one is put forth by the sea lion (“you’ve been nothing but rude”) but when I read the strip I end up having more than a modicum of sympathy for the sea lion!

The person begins with an objection to sea lions. We don’t know if sea lions in this comic-strip world are persecuted or reviled in general but we don’t know that they are not. The sea lion would appear to feel that they are.

The person when asked to elaborate or provide a reason for this sentiment moves quickly towards “Go away”. The human would be a far more sympathetic character if some initial good-faith attempt to address the sea lion’s initial request were provided and then the sea lion dismissed each and every one as inadequate and THEN went on a pushy rant about “either put up or shut up”. Or if the human said “I was just expressing a matter of personal taste, I don’t have any supporting argument to make, and it’s possible I’m biased or something”.

As a thought experiment, make the original comment something mildly disparaging about a category of people who have often been vilified. Imagine it that way.

I really don’t see the sea lion’s overall behavior (in the strip) as being unreasonable.

2

Maybe the artist would’ve been more precise if he knew people were going to overthink it so much.

3

I wholeheartedly agree.

4

I concur that the sea lion isn’t doing any of the above, so the comic strip isn’t a good demonstration of the phenomenon. Better examples can be found in GD, except that there are usually more than one sea lion, and they aren’t particularly polite.

ISTM to be one of those things. If I do it, it is a perfectly valid form of debate, whereas when someone else does it, it’s sealioning/etc.

Regards,
Shodan

5

Agreed. I know this comic is the source of the term but I don’t really “get” how it became the source of the term. On it’s own, it feels pretty forgettable and I find it hard to believe that people actually read it and thought “Yes! We should name this technique Sealioning!”

6

It’s hard to believe something that already happened?

7

It’s a reference to the sea lions who basically took over the docks at several towns in California: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kz72plhD1RM

8

Breaking and entering is incredibly unreasonable.

9

Exactly this. At the time that the cartoon appeared, it was #1062 in the series. It was never intended to be a viral internet meme, just a cartoon – one that derived its humor from something that most of us recognize as true in contemporary internet debates. Let me ask you, AHunter3, would you be capable of creating 1,062 cartoons on various social issues, every single one of them flawless and perfect analogies to the thing being parodied?

It’s just a cartoon, which just exemplifies a general idea. I’ve cited it quite a few times and quite like it because of that simple fact – that it succinctly illustrates a general idea, that’s all.

10

I think you’ve hit the nail on the head here. The sea lion breaks into a house without permission in the comic…

People doing sealioning on the internet don’t break into houses, but they insist on ‘politely’ pursuing people to talk about something they don’t want to talk about.

The violation in sealioning is that people have choices about what they want to talk about - pursuing those people and hounding them to talk about something they don’t want to talk about is sealioning. So if I mention that I don’t like backpacks in GQ, and someone asks me about it in not only that thread, but finds me in a thread in IMHO to ask about backpacks, and finds me on Twitter to ask about backpacks, and shows up on my Facebook page to ask about backpacks - well, that’s sealioning.

11

I disagree with the definition of sealioning the OP gave. I feel the essence of sealioning is somebody who pretends that as long as they maintain a surface expression of courtesy that the rudeness of their actions should be overlooked. It’s like somebody who says “please” and “thank you” as they rob you at gunpoint.

That’s what the sealion is doing in the comic strip. Sure, he’s says things like “pardon me” but he follows the couple into their house and refuses to leave as he harasses them through the night and into the next day. His actions are outrageously rude even while he claims he’s been “unfailingly polite”.

12

I agree with this, and what Little Nemo said.

There’s sealioning, and there’s JAQing off. The difference, IMHO, is that textbook sea would entail following someone from forum to forum (not just within a message board, but across a range of social media), effectively harassing them as they “politely” (but completely out of the blue, within the context of subsequent encounters) bring up a topic that the victim of sealioning may have disagreed with them on on another forum. It’s a devil’s brew of harassment, cyber-stalking, and JAQing off.

13

Well, mbh already provided additional context beyond “Everyone was smitten by this cartoon” so… yeah? :stuck_out_tongue:

14

+1. All I would really add to that is, it may not be the best possible term, but it’s good enough to have been adopted. The proof of the pudding, if you will. Anyone is free to sponsor a better term, if you can think of one. And as Vinyl Turnip pointed out, the artist is not responsible for this coinage.

j

15

There seems to be a fair bit of disagreement / confusion about what “sea lioning” actually is. It’s basically a Rorschach blot test. Some people see someone asking questions and “that’s sealioning!” while someone else sees someone being polite but persistent and “that’s sealioning!” and others apparently only see it as sealioning if the persistent questioner pursues people across multiple forums (which isn’t, I think, an issue on the SDMB then).

16

I don’t think “there’s sealioning and there’s JAQing off” really dismisses AHunter’s interpretation of sealioning. If anything I’d call sealioning a specific form of JAQing off, typically done in a way to disrupt an existing conversation or monopolize the time to harass or distract someone talking about a specific topic you dislike. An exhaustion tactic, basically.

I agree with the OP that the Sealion looks more reasonable in the comic, but you can’t forget the context it was made in and the audience it was published to. It was created in the hottest midst of Gamergate, when the whole thing was fresh. It was very true at the time that daring to mention Zoe Quinn, Gamergate, or other related things would cause people to show up just very reasonably asking aw shucks but are you sure… The very, very specific thing the Sealioning comic is referencing (in the cultural context it was published) is how saying something like “Gamergate is harassing…” would like magic make 300 people appear in your replies very politely asking you to show them evidence Gamergaters are harassing women because oh my that’d just be awful but they haven’t really seen any convincing proof.

It’s still somewhat true today that even remotely disparagingly mentioning the word “Gamergate” has approximately the same effect as saying Bloody Mary three times in a dark mirror – it will summon them to haunt you. In communities that survived that whole fiasco it’s immediately obvious when people use a nonsense word with 3 syllables, 2 starting with Gs (e.g. Goobergolf), or something similar to “Gater” (often just “Gator”), that they’re masking “Gamergate” because it’s half a joke half preventing people searching it from showing up. Something I’d like to stress again still happens somehow in TYOOL 2019.

After searching just now, I actually like the RationalWiki (which i’m not a huge fan of) definition, they actually put it in a section under the Just Asking Questions article: Just asking questions - RationalWiki

I especially like them likening it to a senate filibuster, it’s basically the same thing but outside of a formalized rule set.

The other stuff? The cyber stalking and bullying? Relentlessly (e-)following someone and heckling/disrupting their every move? Absolutely a component of Gamergate, and people who use a sealioning tactic typically engage in those other behaviors, but sealioning isn’t that itself. Sealioning is more of one of their harassment tactics, not the entire framework.

I have foundthat at least among the demographic that ended up really, really entrenched in Gamergate (meaning mostly millenials with maybe some younger gen Xers, but a subgroup of both of those in gamers/Extremely Online People in general plus a smattering of older games industry professionals) the meaning of sealioning is much more agreed upon than the fuzzier disagreement I see here, but I also may have just not met the right other people. Maybe I should find someone giving an alternate definition and ask for evidence that’s the proper one :')

17

That cartoon is a wannabe Maakies.

18

You’ve said this far better than I could have. I regret that my supposed example of sealioning was far too specific, and poorly represents the other forms the tactic can take. The context of Gamergate is important, since it provides far more real examples than anything I could come up with, and gives history for how the Extremely Online execute harassment that appears incomprehensible to many who aren’t that online.

The analogy to a filibuster is a very good one - the point of the tactic is not to engage in debate, but to appear to engage in debate while exhausting the target.

19

Sooo, there’s a definitive connection between David Malki! and that video from SoCal Connected? There’s no proof that the two are connected other than sea-lions being the primary focus. As noted ad nauseum in the other thread the sea-lion is a representative of a certain set of attitudes. Someone saw that and built it up into a meme that went viral. There’s plenty of other memes that inexplicably have done the same, so it’s not so “unbelievable” that this is just another example of that.

20

Well, I’ve learned a lot from this thread, including the details of the origins and context of the comic.

And I see your point about barging into the humans’ home to continue the “discussion”.

I suppose I was looking at it backwards, from the vantage point of us as a message board discussing “sealioning” as a troll-esque / jerkish behavior, and thinking that the comic did not reapply portray the sea lion doing the primary kinds of things I tend to associate with “sealioning”, i.e., continuing to demand proof or elaborations after they’v either been provided or when what was aserted really should not require substantiation.