Whataboutism
"Russia invaded ukraine! Putin must be held accountable!"
"Yeah well what about Iraq, 2003???"
this post was submitted on 17 May 2025
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That's the "tu quoque", aka "you too" argument evasion
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"?
You forget the most common one of all, lying.
That's part gishgalloping part gaslighting, no?
"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 fallacies is the self-important idiot's way out of replying to someone's argument.
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.
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.
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.
Man that's such a strawman, you're completely misrepresenting why they bring up fallacies.
The one I see the most is just playing dumb and pretending not to understand basic things
That may or may not be a technique.
Depending on what they are doing, it can be a form of sea-lioning.
Sometimes they're genuinely dumb, but often it's obvious that they know, and they know you know.
That would be sea-lioning.
It's bad food. I get into bad hungry defensive moods with bad food.
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.
Ad-Hominen attack, I think its called.
Ad hominem. Yes, that's it.
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