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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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.”
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"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.
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
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?
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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.
Yeah, and you'd think that even leftists would agree that having the people in charge that want cheaper college, and cheaper medicine/healthcare would be the better option, even if (from their lens) they are a right wing party.
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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).
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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.
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Appeal to fallacies is the self-important idiot's way out of replying to someone's argument.
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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
Innuendo studios has a nice series of videos on this on YouTube
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.
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"?
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