And that’s exactly the ambiguity I was trying to get at with my last paragraph.
I’m kind of surprised I got downvoted while contrarian “source?” comments got lots of upvotes. In all honesty, it feels bad. I am not sure how I said anything anywhere near offensive that deserves disapproval, but being contrarian seems a lot more purposely meant to piss off and still meets lots of peoples’ approval.
But even still, I have gone and assumed bad faith or at best, an attempt to be funny and make people laugh through what is still in the end just contrarianism. I do not think it is possible they are genuinely asking for a source because I think we’re making claims based on general observation of the world, things that do not need to be cited, like “the sky is blue” or “things fall when you drop them”. Just look up and see (or trust the wealth of statements talking about the sky’s blueness if you are (color)blind). Perhaps I’m incorrectly assuming bad faith here based off of a trend of seeing contrarianism, and I’m incorrectly extrapolating that trend here. It is very ambiguous. I really do not think I am wrong, but given that we’re literally talking about the difficulty of determining good vs. bad faith engagement it feels a little arrogant to not acknowledge the possibility that I might be wrong.
That’s one of the issues, isn’t it? I recently found someone who only responded to comments about Margaret Thatcher, challenging negative comments about her. This person’s history went back years and ALL of the comments (thousands!) only challenged negative ones about her. It could have been a bot, of course, but if real, it was a pretty weird way of engaging online. That goes beyond contrarianism, it’s some sort of “distributed sealioning” maybe?
And that’s exactly the ambiguity I was trying to get at with my last paragraph.
I’m kind of surprised I got downvoted while contrarian “source?” comments got lots of upvotes. In all honesty, it feels bad. I am not sure how I said anything anywhere near offensive that deserves disapproval, but being contrarian seems a lot more purposely meant to piss off and still meets lots of peoples’ approval.
But even still, I have gone and assumed bad faith or at best, an attempt to be funny and make people laugh through what is still in the end just contrarianism. I do not think it is possible they are genuinely asking for a source because I think we’re making claims based on general observation of the world, things that do not need to be cited, like “the sky is blue” or “things fall when you drop them”. Just look up and see (or trust the wealth of statements talking about the sky’s blueness if you are (color)blind). Perhaps I’m incorrectly assuming bad faith here based off of a trend of seeing contrarianism, and I’m incorrectly extrapolating that trend here. It is very ambiguous. I really do not think I am wrong, but given that we’re literally talking about the difficulty of determining good vs. bad faith engagement it feels a little arrogant to not acknowledge the possibility that I might be wrong.
That’s one of the issues, isn’t it? I recently found someone who only responded to comments about Margaret Thatcher, challenging negative comments about her. This person’s history went back years and ALL of the comments (thousands!) only challenged negative ones about her. It could have been a bot, of course, but if real, it was a pretty weird way of engaging online. That goes beyond contrarianism, it’s some sort of “distributed sealioning” maybe?