this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2023
202 points (96.3% liked)

No Stupid Questions

35830 readers
1151 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

I've run across these terms several times, but without enough context to figure out what they mean. Could someone help me out, please?

ETA All of you are amazing! A huge thank you to everyone who responded, and an extra thank you to those who have provided links or explanations to further and/or related information. I am learning so much by reading all of these comments!

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 141 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Sealioning is the constant bad faith, feigning ignorance, asking for evidence of everything under the guise of “just asking questions”. Then ignoring any evidence presented and moving on to the next demand. Used to shut down discourse entirely.

Tankies are leftists that defend or deny the atrocities committed by authoritarian communist regimes like the Soviet Union or the CCP. It was first used to describe communists in Great Britain that defended the Soviet Union for using tanks to crush anti-communist revolutions.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 1 year ago (14 children)

It doesn’t have to be leftists, anyone who does that is a tankie.

load more comments (14 replies)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Is that what sealioning is though?

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 74 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Tankies are the cringe "communists", authoritarians that beleave that no one but them (definitely not rich people) should have power. You can generally spot them because they often idolize the Soviet Union and CCP, despite the fact that both were/are authoritarian shitholes.

Sealioning is when you repeatedly ask someone basic questions in an attempt to annoy them or make it look like they don't have any. Often sealioners pretend they just want to engage in debate, but in reality ignore or deny any evidence or arguments presented.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 56 points 1 year ago (12 children)

Tankies are Red Fascists. They're essentially communism-flavored authoritarians. I would contend they do not qualify as "left", "leftists", etc but far-right. They support and defend Soviet Russia and the CCP, specifically defending their atrocities and oppression.

load more comments (12 replies)
[–] [email protected] 53 points 1 year ago (5 children)

“Tankies” is slang for communists who align with the philosophy of authoritarian rule, like the Soviet Union who used violence to keep countries under their control in check.

Sealioning is something I saw a lot on Reddit, but not so much here - it is when someone responds continuously asking questions, trying to seem like they are engaged, but in reality they are trolling you. Like when you say something like “The sky is so blue today” and the come back with “That is interesting, do you have a link to some information that I can learn more about that?”

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Oh my god I get sealioned in real life. Now I can call people out on it with a title.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That’s interesting, do you have a link where I could read more about that?

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Asking for proof isn't necessarily trolling. Someone making wild claims should have to source their knowledge

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (5 children)

They're not really communists tho, because (like you said) they defend the use of violence by a ruling class

A ruling class just wouldn't exist under actual communism. Which is the main reason communism won't work for any group more than like ~200 people in size.

They're fans of fake communism like the Soviet Union or China

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I’d agree with you, but Marx literally calls for a temporary dictatorship of the proletariat in the communist manifesto

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Yeah and as smart as anyone is, they aren't right all the time. As much as you can agree with his messaging, it's important to critically assess everything said, regardless of who is saying it.

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 year ago (1 children)

One thing about sealioning that I haven't seen mentioned yet is that it's a tactic designed to utterly exhaust the other person by asking question after question with no willingness to listen to the answers. It's there to waste time and grind down your opponent until they have had enough of your bullshit and tell you to fuck off. At that point you can feign offense and declare victory.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

A quick jab can help cure sealioning.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Or a club to the fucking head.

(For legal and animal cruelty reasons this is a joke.)

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (6 children)

For sea-lioning, here’s the comic the term originated from to explain it

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thank you, that really explains it! I was afraid that I may come across as sea-lioning sometimes because I tend to ask lots of questions, but the comic makes it more clear what sea-lioning is.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

It boils down to whether you argue in good faith. Even better, if you discuss in good faith. Asking a lot of questions that comes from a desire to learn or from curiosity usually lands differently then the disingenuous questioning of someone like a tankie

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Sealioning originiates with this comic strip. Tankies is a perjorative term broadly applied to anyoneone with marxist-leninist beliefs, applied by centre left and liberals. It refers originally to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia with the implication being that "tankies" support the crushing of resistence to Soviet authority but used more generally just do dismiss anyone with militantly anti-capitalist ideals.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (9 children)

Tankies are generally not just anybody with communist perspectives, but a. certain extreme. A tankie is the type of person who will essentially argue that capitalism and western society are the roots of all evil, and deflect from any criticism of Russia, China, Iran, etc. by attacking the US instead of actually addressing the criticism.

load more comments (9 replies)
[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

applied by centre left and liberals

It's a term that originates with the left. Specifically, those who broke with the USSR over imperialist invasions, referring to those who did not. More broadly, it refers to the authoritarian left (as opposed to the anarchist left).

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›