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Comment by Tharre | Hacker News Reader

If you're claiming that women, in general, today on the internet face worse than death threats, you're going to need to provide proof for that.

And anecdotal evidence is not going to cut it, most people with an online presence get their fair share of death threats at some point.

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Please don't do things that amount to trolling on HN.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13319761 and marked it off-topic.

It seems indisputable that sustained harassment is a problem for some significant number of women online.

I'm asserting that such harassment is worse than what I faced back then, and that what I faced then was pretty unusual.

That's a significantly weaker claim then.

Depending on how many women are needed for a 'significant number' I might even agree with it.

I don't think you're arguing in good faith right now. This sounds an awful lot like sealioning.

(For those who aren't familiar with it, http://wondermark.com/1k62/ is the origin of the term.)

I have no idea what you're trying to point out (or what that comic is about).

That comic is pointing out that the kind of behaviour that you're engaging in is obnoxious. The downvotes you appear to be accumulating? That's what that is about. It's not simply disagreement, though I expect you'll blame it all on that anyways.

He's pointing out that you're trying to force an argument to happen, even when it's clear that the other party doesn't really want to engage in an argument. Additionally, you're doing it in a fairly obnoxious manner.

I thank you for your explanation, but I still don't get it. How was I forcing an argument in any shape or form? I merely asked for clarification on a _very_ extreme claim, which I got shortly afterwards, in the form that the claim was meant differently. That would have been the end of the matter for me.

But apparently I'm obnoxious? Well, than so be it.

For what it's worth, I think your position is fair and the whole 'sealioning' people are strawmanning your argument.

I think your 'error' here was approaching a topic that is [post-facto] obviously sensitive in a normal (i.e.: less than sensitive) manner.

People get very polarized about politics[1] and your comments signaled you as being in opposition in some form wrt the "women's rights" position but did NOT virtue signal against their outgroup.

Consequently, your argument was interpreted as being pro-outgroup, hence the "you're a neckbeard"-style attacks.

Be more careful about sensitive topics next time.

[1] http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/

[2] http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything...

You started out by dramatically misrepresenting the other person's position, which is obnoxious at best and malicious at worst. Would you prefer that I not give you the benefit of the doubt and claim that you deliberately straw-manned the other person's argument for some nebulous, nefarious purpose?

If you don't submit and lay prostrate before the initial claim, you are guilty. Asking questions is forbidden. Clarification is forbidden. Always pretend to understand instead of engaging in analysis.

Welcome to the mindset of the people who want to control the Internet.

Alternately, a lot of us are tired of having the same discussions over and over again, with people who don't seem to be discussing in good faith.

I, for one, approach every discussion online with cautious open-mindedness. My time is limited. It doesn't take much for me to want to direct my energies elsewhere.

You can call it virtue-signalling, you can say that asking questions is forbidden, I can say that I'm under no obligation to talk to you or anyone.

And I've learned, through my own experience, that there's a familiar form of discussion that I am not interested in having; the person I responded to hit that form and showed me my energy is better spent elsewhere.

You can talk to them all you want. It's a big internet. I don't have to, and I won't.

An almost acceptable pivot, if it wasn't for the sealioning accusation in the parent.

I stand by the sealioning accusation. I calls 'em as I sees 'em. I think the poster was sealioning, and I'm not going to engage with someone beyond that.

You want to? Go for it. I am not, nor is anyone else, obligated to.

I don't know what sites you visit, but I've been online since 1996 and have never received a death threat. It's not a normal thing.

Second, I don't think the OP's point was that women face "worse than death threats", but that they receive a lot of harassment online. That should be obvious to anybody who's used the internet for any appreciable amount of time. If that's really news to you, then google it.

It isnt normal, but once a women is targeted it becomes very bad very fast. So while it isn't normal for any paticular women to be harrassed, it is very normal for those wwho are to be so shockingly harrassed that it paints a false picture of the online community as a whole.

I didn't claim it's 'normal' nor did I claim that everyone on the internet gets death threats. But if you have an online presence with an audience of tens of thousands you will get them. So pointing to popular female youtubers for example, who get death threats is not valid evidence.

I don't know what his point was, thus I wrote 'if you're claiming that ...'

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