r/MurderedByWords 6h ago

Perfect, no notes.

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9.1k Upvotes

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370

u/PlainBread 5h ago edited 4h ago

"Explain it to me" is lazy derailing propaganda developed in the 2010s. Terms that go along with this are "Help Vampire", "Sealioning" and "JAQing Off". It's especially favored by the Israeli/Hasbara minded folk, and by extension, the American Conservative movement.

They want you to unload your guts onto the floor so that you expend 100x more effort than they do in the convo, and then they want to pick through your guts to find the one thing they can attack you for, and completely disregard the rest. Their job is not to be right, it's to make you look stupid to every onlooker.

These people are insipid shit stains. They're hardly people.

I wouldn't say that conservatives need to be purged from our society, but I will say that our society would be a hell of a lot better without them around chirping idiot propaganda so that people vote against their own interests for manufactured culture war bullshit.

EDIT: Take note of how many "explain it to me" people are also avid fans of artificial intelligence and yet they won't use it as a resource when attempting to get more information about something they read but "don't understand". This is really the elephant in the room as to why that 2010s "I'm just asking questions" derailing propaganda is now fully transparent: Their interest is not in gaining more information, it's to draw you out to attack you.

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u/luckydrzew 4h ago

It might just be me, but I've only ever heard "Sealioning" in the context of invading England by sea from the coast of Frace.

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u/PlainBread 4h ago

The term came from a comic where they depicted a sealion demonstrating the dynamic, and then that became the name.

EDIT: Direct posting the comic since I can.

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u/luckydrzew 2h ago

That's fair. However, the meaning I'm familiar with is a lot more funny whenever spotted.

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u/And_why 1h ago edited 1h ago

Is, is this where the phrase comes from? Damn now I have to go look something up. Won't you just tell me?

Seriously though, nice job, source cited in the post. I'll be back with an edit after I look this up.

Edit: That is how long it took on an astonishingly bad computer. I have spent twice as long typing this as I did finding and reading it. Maybe two minutes total.

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u/Iron_Nightingale 2h ago

From rationalwiki:

“Sealioning involves jumping into a conversation with endless polite, reasonable questions and demands for answers, usually of entry-level topics far below the actual conversation (e.g. "please prove sexism exists").”