What techniques do bad faith users use online to overwhelm other users in online discussion and arguments?
I am aware of
I want to know I theres any others I'm not aware of
Here is a great piece someone put together a while ago which goes through many of the techniques bad actors use.
I remember reading that list years and years ago and thinking how petty it was that so much effort has gone into it.
Now I'm a little bit worried about how far ahead of the game these cunts are.
Cherry picking is probably one of the most egregious
You can make a university-level essay on a subject, and people will identify one tiny irrelevant detail they disagree with and ignore the overall point
Cherry pick and move the goal post.
For example:
University-level essays? You know for-profit universities exist, right? If you don't have a masters degree on the subject, then you have no right to speak on the topic.
Oh shit you triggered me with "you don't have the right" lol
Yeah like I don't have the right to talk about abortion, reproductive health, or anything like that because I don't have ovaries
I don't live in a society, I don't have a mother, sister, thousands of females in my life who I care about. I don't get to advocate for women's reproductive rights, because I don't have the right bits in my crotchal area
I also don't get to express an opinion on anything that I am not a personal expert in. If I saw a helicopter with one of the blade snapped off, I'm not allowed to refuse boarding, because I'm not a helicopter maintenance technician. I don't have the right to express my opinion on the subject
False dichotomy - Assuming that because someone doesn’t agree with one viewpoint, they must fully support the opposite. Framing the issue as if there are only two mutually exclusive positions, when in fact there may be many shades in between.
Strawmanning - Misrepresenting someone’s argument - usually by exaggerating, distorting, or taking it out of context - so it’s easier to attack or refute.
Ad hominem - Attacking the character, motives, or other traits of the person making the argument rather than addressing the substance of the argument itself.
Reductionism - The tendency to reduce every complex issue to a single cause - like blaming everything on capitalism, fascism, patriarchy, etc. - while ignoring other contributing factors.
Moving the goalposts - Changing the criteria of an argument or shifting its focus once the original point has been addressed or challenged - usually to avoid conceding.
Hasty generalizations - Treating entire groups as if they’re uniform, attributing a trait or behavior of some individuals to all members of that group.
Oversimplification - Ignoring the nuance and complexity inherent in most issues, reducing them to overly simple terms or black-and-white thinking.
Man knows his fallacies! Excellent. This bodes well for interesting discussion!
Moving the goalposts.
Butwhatabout.
Appeal to hypocrisy is big.
I thought it was called "whataboutism"?
Yeah, same thing.
Flooding the zone (which now that I think about it is close enough to gish-galloping for there not to be much of a distinction), whataboutism, and moving the goalposts are all extremely common.
Whataboutism and moving the goalposts are the ones I see most often.
I'll give you a huge one.
Purity tests (when cosplaying as liberals). If a person isn't super-duper liberal on every single issue then you can't support them.
There's tons of this on this very site. People who will tell you they'll stay home and not vote for someone, if they only support 80% of what they seemingly want. People see this, then emulate said behavior.
Somehow, liberals would rather get 0% of what they want instead of 50% because of the missed 30% that the candidate doesn't support.
Politicians you don't like can make good policies and politicians you do like can make bad policies. Parties are not football teams for you to take blind sides and politicians are not celebrities to be veneered blindly. They are public servants, nothing more.
It's a global phenomenon, but Americans are particularly affect by the false dichotomy fallacy of having the two sides of political spectrum represented when, in reality, they just have two flavors of right to choose from. Both are shit in their own way.
People love to turn off their brains and follow the leadership. That's what makes us easily manipulable. It's not because someone aligns politically with you that they are working with your best interest in mind.
Sorry for the random rambling.
I agree 100% with the purity test thing, but "liberal" ≠ leftist. That's not a purity thing, it's a "words have specific definitions" thing.
I know idiot tankies say this, and I know they are annoying when they constantly use "liberal" as an insult... But it is technically correct that they are two distinct ideologies (with some overlap).
If the 20% they don't support is the absolute most basic of human rights, then as far as I can tell they actually support 0% of what I want.
genocide is not something you negotiate away. Some things arent for sale. If you choose to whore for those sweet sweet zionist paychecks, thats on you. Dont project that vileness on others.
Was this supposed to be a demonstration of projection? If so, well done.
genocide is not something you negotiate away.
Genocide is not something you stay at home for and hope it goes away on its own.
You don't get to claim the ally if all you did was nothing.
OP criticized people who stayed home (choosing to hold on to their purity) instead of voting for the candidates least likely to perpetuate futher suffering.
Going "oh no this trolley problem is so terrible I refuse to even look at the lever" is prioritizing your own moral superiority over the people tied to the tracks.
There is a series "The Alt Right Playbook" that covers a lot of bad faith and manipulative tactics, many of which are used online.
I hate the one where you call them a fascist (because they literally are) and then they come around and call you a "blue MAGA".
like bitch, if I was "blue MAGA" I'd be making IEDs and forcing abortions on women and shit. ain't nobody got time for that. I'm building a garden so I can fuckin eat this year.
Calling someone "blue MAGA" is the equivalent of saying "no you!"
However, it's time to stop pretending like some small group of "MAGA" conservatives have hijacked the party and taken things too far. The monied interests backing Trump are the same as have been backing Republicans for decades. The Federalist Society, the Heritage Foundation, etc. Mitch McConnell has been working to fill the federal courts with Federalist picks for a long time. Picking or just outright manufacturing court cases that would set new precedents. Hell, even those thinktanks are just recent iterations of the same interest's attempts to shape the government as they see fit. Trump is just a nepo baby turned grifter who got lucky because his grift was actually effective at attracting and controlling the loudest segment of the Republican base.
Trump just transparently said "As long as I get filthy rich, get to be king, and you keep [metaphorically] sucking my dick, I'll keep my followers in line and use my position to put your people in power so they can implement your 'Project 25' or whatever." Republicans mostly objected to him because he lacked subtlety and was transparently greedy and petty. He ignored the game of slow, subtle changes and manipulation through "decorum" that Republicans had become experts in. Unfortunately for us, that worked wonders on a subset of the population
The people who helped those Republican politicians keep getting elected and basically wrote their proposed laws noticed Trump was popular. When it became apparent that Trump's followers were loyal, the money jumped at the chance to fast track their vision and backed him completely. They helped tweak and hone Trump's message to amplify his grifter magic. That plus some changes to election laws around the country, gerrymandering, and likely other more covert, extralegal vote manipulation got him back in power.
Anyone who unironically says "blue MAGA" immediately gives themselves away as someone to not take seriously.
Blue maga? I wouldn't encourage people to vote for the Democrat party if it had any viable competition.
I use bluemaga to refer to people who behave like MAGA supporters but for the Dems: people who believe all disagreement should be forbidden, like the guy currently stalking me across multiple instances to insult me because I disagreed with him about the Democrats policy on Gaza.
No, I think you have the definition of that word wrong blue Maga is just the people on the left that are making money, commenting, andreacting to the shit people do on the right. CNN and MSNBC telling us the latest bullshit Trump has done is a blue Maga type behavior
You think all MAGA people are actively building IEDs.
"Thought-terminating clichés"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_clich%C3%A9
Also... I don't think it has a name, but dubiously claiming any of these examples in an argument. Maybe it'd just be called "deflection".
I've seen so many valid arguments shutdown as whataboutism, sealioning, concern trolling when they were valid arguments. It's just as much bullshit as actually doing any of those things.
Appeal to Fallacy.
It might not be a fallacy.
A fallacy doesn't make an argument wrong.
There are degrees of fallacies.
Claiming a statement is wrong because there might be a fallacy is a thought-ending argument. There's more nuance and relatability in rhetoric. Refusing to engage because someone's using a fallacy is reasonable, but calling it by name isn't a magic spell that forces someone to throw in the towel.
This is a good one. The use of fallacies doesn't necessarily void an argument, it just fails to support it logically.
For example, I could craft a perfect, clean, cold-cut argument so water-tight and beautiful that even ben-fucking-shapiro would have a come-to-jesus. Calling my opponent a "dickhead" at the end (ad hominem) doesn't prove anything, but it doesn't nullify the entire rest of the argument either. Plus it's fun.
I agree, an argument can be a narrative, too. One where the second person is a dickhead.
This is everywhere on the internet. I think it's people looking for an easy way out in arguing. Purposely include a few logic fallacies and watch as the vast majority of people latch onto them. Ignoring any previous points they were trying to make. I like ad hominem.
I have never seen an online discussion where gaslighting was used. People usually just learned the term and they think it's a synonym for lying.
Gaslighting could take the form of saying "my political team would never do [the thing]." Their political team subsequently does [the thing]. Then claiming they never said the original statement. Sometimes they're even so fucking stupid as to leave that comment visible so you can just screenshot it and ask "this you?"
... ask me how I know.
Basically every step of the narcissists prayer is attempted gaslighting
That didn't happen. And if it did, it wasn't that bad. And if it was, that's not a big deal. And if it is, that's not my fault. And if it was, I didn't mean it. And if I did, you deserved it.
How is that not just lying?
Gaslighting (if my understanding is correct) is manipulating someone. Making someone question their own sanity, blaming them, isolating from other people and making them dependent on you.
Lying on the internet to win a stupid argument with a stranger hardly can even start to measure to that.
It wasn't a nazi salute, he was just waving
That's the problem with relying on slang instead of real conversation. The desire to process our social media feeds as fast and with as little typing as possible means we encapsulate complex issues into ridiculously overgeneralized shorhand. We take in minimal information about each item, apply minimal quality control (mostly our own prejudices), use minimal thought to arrive at value judgements that make us feel morally impeccable, and spit out condensed replies. It's superficial hillbilly-grade communication with a delusion of being informed, involved and enlightened.
No we don't! /s
Fallacy accusations.
When someone does not want to argue about your points they will attack the way you used to made them. If you check hard enough you can find fallacies in most online conversations. So if someone wants they could easily accuse anyone of making this or that fallacy. Some of them being also kind of subjective. Was this a valid example or was it a strawman?
They would just change the debate subject and put you on the defensive defending yourself of making fallacies.
I just usually point out this attitude and end the debate when this happens.
Man that's such a strawman, you're completely misrepresenting why they bring up fallacies.
A fallacy matters if it’s central to proving the argument, otherwise it probably doesn’t. Eg Bringing up an anecdote, or a subjective experience as a way of illustrating a point could be said to be fallacious, but is not, if the argument is well supported enough that would stand without it.
I just had an argument where I ended my point with the words “this is a pure could have been:” and added a very likely scenario that may well could have come to pass it some events were different. Obviously it was speculation and not central to the previous argument, but in my estimation likely.
Then other person instead of responding to actual points took the last part and accused me of should’a, would’a, could’a.
Dude, yes! But not the point, also I was the one that pointed it out. The type of person that would explain to a comedian their own joke.
Is there a fallacy fallacy? where people assume that because something has a fallacy its wrong, or they accuse something of having a non-existant fallacy?
There are a few phallic fallacies for sure.
There is indeed
Fallacy accusations.
No one needs to waste their time with someone else's invalid reasoning.
Some of them being also kind of subjective.
Logicians & philosophers would disagree. Fallacies clarify identifying common reasoning errors & save effort overexplaining clearly documented problems.
Was this a valid example or was it a strawman?
Strawman means claiming to refute an argument by instead refuting a misrepresentation of it. Unclear how a question about examples would arise there unless the definition wasn't understood.
Whataboutism
"Russia invaded ukraine! Putin must be held accountable!"
"Yeah well what about Iraq, 2003???"
That's the "tu quoque", aka "you too" argument evasion
Down with the empire! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viriathus
What's the word for dumping a novel of slop like this?
New copypasta just dropped everyone!
This is satire right lol? The utter lack of formattinf gives it away. Otherwise it's just totally unhinged
If it makes you feel any better society is completely fucked in say 50 years and there will be a collapse/catastrophe. You will never have to worry about this ever again.
I think the most common thing I see online and offline is constantly adding more sources to the discussion to the point that the other person feels they can’t know anything. My grandmother does this with her nonsense and pseudo-intellectual books. Just because I haven’t read “why inner city black people have guns 3” doesn’t mean I can’t not be a racist.
On the other hand, when the sources are literally just news stories on npr.com or whatever, there's no excuse not to just click it and at least read the headline.
The one I see the most is just playing dumb and pretending not to understand basic things
One I see people use frequently and I’m not sure they realize it’s a bad argument is the fallacy of relative privation.
“X is bad. We should do something to fix X.”
“Y is so much worse. I can’t believe you want to fix X when we need to fix Y.”
Both X and Y can be bad and need to be fixed. Fixing one doesn’t preclude fixing the other.
An alternate form of this is:
“A is bad”
“B is worse, so A is fine.”
Is okay to choose A simply because B is quite literally orange hitler?
Obviously yes. Doing so isn’t saying A is fine, doing so is saying B is worse, and bad is still better than worse.
If you tried to say that there was no reason to be concerned with A because B was worse, that’s a fallacy. But acknowledging that one of two options, while still bad, is LESS bad, isn’t a fallacy. That’s just being realistic.
Here's a handy guide to help.
Why do we not have some brilliant mind just fully memorize all of the ins and outs of how these arise and just crush bad faith arguments by simply labeling them in real time rather than engaging with them?
Like, if framed correctly "I don't engage in logical fallacy. I will immediately call it out, move on, and go back to the relevant topic."
"Oh you don't care about starving children?"
"That's an appeal to emotion. I won't engage with this obvious logical fallacy. I will address the causes of children suffering to alleviate their suffering."
"But the cause is illegal immigrants!!!"
"That's a strawman. I won't engage with logical fallacies. If you'd like to have a discussion about solving problems, Im all ears, but until we're done pointing fingers, this conversation is over."
That's a tactic I've seen widely used, especially by the assholes we are talking about.
Words have meaning to us, and fascists love that because they are not beholden to any truth at all.
It's actually somewhat effective in my experience. Another thing I've recently started doing is calling out mean comments. Nobody wants to think of themselves as a mean person but it's quite difficult accusation to argue against when the evidence is right there in front of their face.
Be the change you want to see:) Really, though, it'll take all of us calling these out.
To be clear, almost every argument contains a fallacy in it. Having a fallacy in an argument only introduces the possibility of it being wrong, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's wrong.
An example of a valid argument is like:
P1: Socrates is a man P2: All men are mortal C: Socrates is mortal
The conclusion is guaranteed to be correct if the premises are correct. Most scientific arguments are technically invoking a fallacy or are invalid in some way, due to the extrapolation from an experiment in lab conditions to a more general conclusion.
Mort and Bailey, when they'll have a weak argument and a much stronger argument, they get you to attack the weak argument, and then they retreat to the stronger, more limited argument.
It's a "motte" FYI
Is there a name for the thing where you'll make an argument with like 3 distinct points supporting it, and the other person will attack only one, and claim the whole thing is in their favor?
Like, "You can't cast two leveled spells in a turn, and you're silenced, and you're out of spell slots, so you can't cast another fireball"
"No, I have another spell slot from my ring. Fireball time!"
cherry picking
Nice try, Elon
Online debate is a waste of time. You can somewhat short-circuit the bad-faith stuff by arguing values instead of facts or policy.
For example, if you say that the State has no right to remove trans kids from their parents, you've made a legal argument that's vulnerable to all the bad faith and you may even be technically wrong. However if you argue that you trust parents to decide what's best over the State, there is nothing to argue about. Bonus, you might actually get some real talk out of reactionaries.
So let me ask you something. We all know that a big part of shaping public opinion online is simply just being exposed to an opinion repeated over and over again. Like when someone says something and then has multiple rebuttals that are similar. Or like when we read an opinion over and over again that is not contested. Given what you said, how do we make headway in shaping opinions publicly by disengaging and allowing their opinions to freely go uncontested. If online debate is a waste of time, why are the just powerful and richest people investing in shaping it while you tell others to disengage
Given what you said, how do we make headway in shaping opinions publicly by disengaging and allowing their opinions to freely go uncontested
To engage you'd have to go into those public spaces, go back to reddit, YouTube comment sections, Facebook groups, etc.
If online debate is a waste of time, why are the just powerful and richest people investing in shaping it while you tell others to disengage
Because the powerful and richest have more money and power than you do.
If you're interested in shaping public opinion I think you need to ask yourself why you are on Lemmy instead of somewhere else?
Then they say they trust parents to make decisions on vaccines when what they mean is they are anti-vax.
Online debate can help in niche situations. It's not about convincing the person toy you are directly opposing. It's about getting the counter arguments in a bigger forum so less brainwashed people might be able to avoid getting brainwashed.
This is it, you're not likely to convince the person you're arguing with (*), but you can convince lurkers.
*You won't convince them then, they're too prideful and defensive to accept alternate ideas during the argument. But you might plant a seed of doubt. Overtime, it might grow and and be accompanied by other doubty plants from seeds planted by others along the way, and who knows? They might have a breakthrough someday, and that argument, perhaps from years ago, was a part of it. I've been on both sides of this dynamic myself online and in person.
It's very helpful in figuring out your own opinions on a topic too. It doesn't matter much if you convince anyone else.
It's not about convincing the person toy are directly opposing. It's about getting the counter arguments in a bigger forum so less brainwashed people might be able to avoid getting brainwashed.
I would describe this as the epitome of "bad faith" commenting.
You are not replying to their actual comment, you are grandstanding to the echo chamber.
I see ad hominem very often as well as strawmanning. Specifically on lemmy people will say tankie/auth or irl they'll say woke/liberal and then use those insults to further strawman argumenents. Specifically multiple times I have said "hey I voted Kamala but her policies deeply concern me", and people responded with "Uhh how dare you not vote Kamala and openly declare you hate democracy, freedom, and trans people".
I often get the feeling those people see everyone who voices dissent as one big amorphous blob. It's as if every conversation on a topic is part of one long argument, and you get assigned every claim that anyone ever made. Almost like they watched that "moops" alt-right playbook video and drew the exact wrong conclusion.
Yup, every time I talk about workers libertarian they say "uhh but what about china, haha no food". Ignoring the fact that most of their claims are garbage simply being a leftist has caused people to drag me with every leftist ideology and person to ever exist.
Check out Rational Wiki's page on logical fallacies https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Logical_fallacy
What do you call someone who is convinced you are something you aren't, based on only a couple words in a comment on a post, draws wild assumptions from that and no actual knowledge and demands you prove them wrong otherwise, they think, they win? Like I'm going to give you my resume to prove I'm not what you think I am? Nope
What do you call someone ...
A moron?
Strawmanning because they won't or can't understand your argument, mistaking the map for the place usually because of equivocating on vaguely understood or multiple definitions, non-sequetor this is where someone just yaps for awhile based on the crap that falls out of their head based on the words they heard but didn't get the point and is barely tracking
Online arguements take ten times the energy to put in than to exit out, any well thought arguement could be shut down just by ignoring it, or making up reasons to avoid confronting it (whataboutism for example)
Nuh uh
Fuck
You forget the most common one of all, lying.
That's part gishgalloping part gaslighting, no?
I love this idea of defining lying using other manipulation techniques when lying itself is such a simple thing in comparison
Appeal to fallacies is the self-important idiot's way out of replying to someone's argument.
Appeal to fallacies
I've seen this misused. An argument from fallacy is a claim that the conclusion of a fallacious argument is false because of the fallacy.
Claiming an argument is invalid (therefore not worth serious consideration until corrected) due to fallacy is not an instance.
Someone started talking about my hair in the profile picture on a discussion on another site because they didn't agree with what I said.
When people do shit like this I just disengage. Life is too short to waste with bad faith arguments.
It's bad food. I get into bad hungry defensive moods with bad food.
Asking the same question over and over for years...
Then just JAGing off (just asking questions) till the other person gets tired of explaining.
Like, if people want to insist on rehashing something from over a decade ago despite it being settled history at this point.
They don't want to actually discuss it, they have an opinion they agree with, and want to scream at someone for valuing facts more than their opinion
There's another type I see often here with these kinds of assholes. It's intentionally misconstruing or reaching the wrong conclusions about what the other person is saying. It's a form of strawmanning. They'll move the argument just a bit to the side, drop a false zinger that could fit the original narrative if you squint hard enough, and accuse you of saying or doing horrible shit when in reality you're saying something else.
And guess what, the people reading do not give a shit. They'll just dogpile if you try to fight it because Lemmy is wonderful like that and people here are so nice and critical.
Motte and bailey.
Barney-Rubbing
I misread and had so many questions about Barney the big purple dinosaur.
These are nonsense words
Innuendo studios has a nice series of videos on this on YouTube
I was going to recommend this very thing.
After an event happens, many people convince themselves they saw it coming all along even if they had no idea.
Everyone is an expert on everything... Worse now because of LLMs
Phrasing something as protecting children... The ultimate form of manipulation
There's some good examples and discussion here https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJA_jUddXvY7v0VkYRbANnTnzkA_HMFtQ
I love Innuendo Studio's stuff. Such a bummer that he's most likely quitting.
Is there a word for dragging the argument to near-unrelated topics? E.g, post about lemmy.ml having comments on whether Ukraine has a nazi government.
I believe that's "whataboutism"?
Any logical falacy
Come on, no one's ever overwhelmed you in bad faith online.
all of them, and are done by propaganda bots, like from russia, and israel. also trying to do the both sides argument, while ignoring that the other side is the one perpetrating it.
It must be nice knowing that you're so correct that everyone who disagrees with you must be a bot.
How about asking why you lose the argument instead of trying to label all this crap.
It's like you're watching your 12th "how to build a full stack application" video while they've already finished their 2nd project.
End of the day what they use to succeed is effort. We don't. Look at the answers here telling you it's pointless to engage. That's why they succeed online. Those people
Is this a joke? Analysis of techniques would be literally asking why an argument were lost, if an argument was indeed lost. Of course you're making a lot of assumptions there, and I agree you're not making an effort
Analysis just leads you further down the incorrect path. The answer is in the title. "Overwhelm" the only answer is we all need to make more content and to share and disseminate it. You see someone commenting against one of these bad faith actors, we need to overwhelm them. We need to get better at having fun while doing it. Inside jokes, memes whatever. Just have fun and make 5 messages for every 1 they attempt. We need to act, not study. By hoping we can study this stuff and figure out how to logically argue against them will only lead to more people disengaging because it's impossible and not fun.
shhh....
it takes 10 gallons of intelligent discussion to dilute an ounce of stupid and the OC was about 400 gallons of pure unfiltered retarded stupidity.
they did have a point though, sometimes the only way to win is to not play.
Whataboutism
Well maybe but lemme tell you about the others!
Buttery males
This makes the males so slippery!