Friday Funnies: Another Day in Paradise-
The Rematch...
Regarding ex-special counsel Robert Hur and his findings... How does one decide criminal intent, if the most basic questions aren't asked? Today - in the House Committee, Robert Hur said:
"as to exactly why the president did what he did is not one that we explicitly address in the report."
That statement is hogwash. If some lame excuse, such as how the excuse that a jury would find Biden too old to be convicted was used to let Biden off the hook- then Mr. Hur doesn't have to ask the hard questions, does he?
Robert Hur had a duty to get to the truth AND the motive. He failed the people of the United States.
Sealioning is a trolling or harassment tactic in online discussions and blogs. It involves the attacker asking relentless and insincere questions or requests for evidence under the guise of civility and a desire for genuine debate. These requests are often tangential or previously addressed, and the attacker maintains a pretense of civility and sincerity, while feigning ignorance of the subject matter. Sealioning is aimed at exhausting the patience and goodwill of the target, making them appear unreasonable.
Use of the term originates from a 19 September 2014 strip of the webcomic Wondermark by David Malki titled The Terrible Sea Lion, where a character expresses a dislike of sea lions and a sea lion intrudes to repeatedly ask her to explain her statement and attempts (in an exaggeratedly civil manner) to interrogate her views, following the characters into the privacy of their own home. "Sea lion" was quickly verbed, and noting this, Malki posted on his own Wondermark site, "I'm happy that it's resonated with so many people".
In 2014, Dina Rickman of the online version of The Independent said of Malki's strip, "This comic is the most apt description of Twitter you'll ever see".
Sealioning has been described as "incessant, bad-faith invitations to engage in debate". Sealioning can be performed by an individual or by a group acting in concert.
An essay in the collection Perspectives on Harmful Speech Online, published by the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard, noted:
Rhetorically, sealioning fuses persistent questioning—often about basic information, information easily found elsewhere, or unrelated or tangential points—with a loudly-insisted-upon commitment to reasonable debate. It disguises itself as a sincere attempt to learn and communicate. Sealioning thus works both to exhaust a target's patience, attention, and communicative effort, and to portray the target as unreasonable. While the questions of the "sea lion" may seem innocent, they're intended maliciously and have harmful consequences.
— Amy Johnson, Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society (May 2019)
American academic philosopher Walter Sinnott-Armstrong discussed the term in his book Think Again: How to Reason and Argue, saying:
Internet trolls sometimes engage in what is called 'sealioning'. They demand that you keep arguing with them for as long they want you to, even long after you realize that further discussion is pointless. If you announce that you want to stop, they accuse you of being closed-minded or opposed to reason. The practice is obnoxious. Reason should not be silenced, but it needs to take a vacation sometimes.
— Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Think Again: How to Reason and Argue (June 2018).
Several other academics link or directly describe sealioning as a technique employed by internet trolls.
Can you recall any examples of being trolled by Sealioning? I could probably cite at least a hundred. Why did you take the jab?? Why did you invent mRNA?? Why didn’t you warn people about the risks of COVID mRNA vaccines (before there were any)?? Why did you develop Remdesivir?? Prove that viruses exist. Prove that SARS-CoV-2 exists. Prove that there was actually a pandemic. Yes, all of these and so many more.
Anyone ever had a child that keeps asking “Why” as a way to drive their parents nuts? Yeah. Many four year olds practice sealioning.
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This is the first time I've heard the term "sealioning." It sounds like what my brother did to me for years and years and years. Ask the same questions over and over, demanding an answer every time. Declare that the answer given is nonsense. If I refused to answer ten or twelve emails in one day, I was said to be refusing to talk to him. Once he started questioning my husband and my husband told him, what's the point in answering; you already know what I'm thinking, as well as my motives.
I have many sealioning family and friends. Usually I won’t engage with them knowing that it will go nowhere, but when I do it always ends up them telling me to stop they don’t want to hear the truth any more. In Robert Hur’s report it was discovered that while having discussions with his ghost writer Joe Biden had gone to retrieve top secret documents and read them directly to his ghost writer. Jim Jordan pressed Hur on this and it came out that Joe Biden received 8 million dollars from his book deal which included the top secret information. Also the ghost writer deleted files from his computer destroying evidence, no charges!!!! How these Democrats can go in front of a camera and say Joe was completely exonerated of all charges shows what disgusting filthy horrible stinking disgraceful liars they are. That’s the disgusting scum that’s running our country. J.Goodrich