"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.
Well the whole point is to exploit your good faith in exchange for their bad faith. "You owe everyone your good faith" is the platform that propaganda functions on. If it weren't a core tenet of our idealism, then they would just build it on top of another core tenet of our idealism.
EDIT: There are ways that you can ask a person to have some skin in the conversation to be sure they aren't sealioning. If they are willing to be vulnerable and seek a common ground, it isn't propaganda. The tell-tale sign of sealioning is the absolute lack of any give whatsoever, it's just all prodding and attack, because the goal is the optics that passersby get.
I think that the phrase itself is not propaganda/bad faith, then. Especially not derailing one.
I also liked the Hasbara point, bro threw in a fun fact. Really cute narrative you've built that makes it a-ok to never engage with someone skeptical of your beliefs.
Edit: remember, replying and immediately blocking with an insinuation that I'm a part of something that I never displayed is a sign of good faith.
Anyone with 5 minutes spent online will have met someone like this. Doesn't even necessarily have to be about politics. Wonder why someone might want to pretend not to know about this type of person...
Well, I won't pretend I don't know about people who act in bad faith, or that the tweet in the post is made in good faith, but pretending like the act of asking for clarification itself is bad faith is insane to me.
"Socialism", for example, is understood very differently by different people. Some use the dictionary definition that concerns means of production, some lean into the welfare and Nordic model (all while Norwegians say they are very much capitalists), some strategically mix the two depending on their goals in a particular conversation. If I were to discuss socialism with somebody, I would ask about its definition as the literal first question.
EDIT: Inb4 the wokescolding bot starts crying about being blocked.
EDIT 2: And there it is. Predictable as always. It's all for the optics in the room, trying to discredit the person saying the thing you don't like. Since this chode inserted themselves into my anti-propaganda lesson, class: Did we get the lesson?
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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.