I’m sorry, but it is entirely implausible to construe Duncan’s comment as not being an accusation. I no longer have any interest in doing the usual song-and-dance about how he didn’t literally say the specific sequence of words “Said is sealioning”, and so what he actually meant was something very nuanced and subtle and definitely, absolutely didn’t mean to actually accuse me, etc., etc.
(As for the word itself, and the concept behind it—I have found that its (unironic, non-quoted) use is an infallible indicator of bad faith. Zack’s characterization of the term is much too charitable.)
I thought the comment was pretty clear that it was trying to give a summary of my comments, and a suggestion for how I should phrase my comment in order to better get my point across. A suggestion which (at least for the case of the use of “sealioning”) I disagreed with.
I agree with you that there was an implicature in Duncan’s comment that he thought the term was an accurate characterization, though I am actually and honestly not that confident Duncan actually believes that the term accurately describes your commenting patterns (in addition to it accurately describing my model of your commenting patterns). I would currently give it about 75% probability, but not more.
In general, I think implicatures of this type should be treated differently than outright accusations, though I also don’t think they should be completely ignored.
On a more general note, since the term appears to be a relatively niche term that I haven’t heard before, it seems to me that the correct way for us to deal with this, would be for people to say openly what connotations the term has to them, and if enough people agree that the term has unhelpful connotations, then avoid using the term. I don’t think we should harshly punish introducing a term like this if there isn’t an established precedent of the connotations of that term.
I think it would be a mistake for us to use that term here; I think as well as describing a pattern of behavior it comes with an implied interpretation of blameworthiness that we really don’t want to import.
I’m sorry, but it is entirely implausible to construe Duncan’s comment as not being an accusation. I no longer have any interest in doing the usual song-and-dance about how he didn’t literally say the specific sequence of words “Said is sealioning”, and so what he actually meant was something very nuanced and subtle and definitely, absolutely didn’t mean to actually accuse me, etc., etc.
(As for the word itself, and the concept behind it—I have found that its (unironic, non-quoted) use is an infallible indicator of bad faith. Zack’s characterization of the term is much too charitable.)
I thought the comment was pretty clear that it was trying to give a summary of my comments, and a suggestion for how I should phrase my comment in order to better get my point across. A suggestion which (at least for the case of the use of “sealioning”) I disagreed with.
I agree with you that there was an implicature in Duncan’s comment that he thought the term was an accurate characterization, though I am actually and honestly not that confident Duncan actually believes that the term accurately describes your commenting patterns (in addition to it accurately describing my model of your commenting patterns). I would currently give it about 75% probability, but not more.
In general, I think implicatures of this type should be treated differently than outright accusations, though I also don’t think they should be completely ignored.
On a more general note, since the term appears to be a relatively niche term that I haven’t heard before, it seems to me that the correct way for us to deal with this, would be for people to say openly what connotations the term has to them, and if enough people agree that the term has unhelpful connotations, then avoid using the term. I don’t think we should harshly punish introducing a term like this if there isn’t an established precedent of the connotations of that term.
I think it would be a mistake for us to use that term here; I think as well as describing a pattern of behavior it comes with an implied interpretation of blameworthiness that we really don’t want to import.