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Using a wedge issue as a universal bludgeon to attack anyone that disagrees with them.
Not sure what technique that's called. Concern troll, possibly?
Also, vote manipulation. Basically they spin up a bunch of alts across different instances and boost/demote posts and comments in an attempt to steer discourse toward their agenda.
Concern troll is, as I understand it, more directly faking concern for a person. Things like "Are you okay? Do you need to talk to someone?"because you rebutted their argument, or "Suicide/self harm are never the answer" because you posted an opinion they disagree with. Sometimes it even rises to the point of reporting comments as self harm in a way that gets an automated or admin response.
Sock-puppet or from 4chan "samefagging". Sorry for the use of the word.
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.
Motte and bailey.
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.
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)
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.
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?
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.
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