No, there's something else to it. It's often used as a misdirection technique, a way to change the subject from an uncomfortable discussion of something the commenter would like to avoid to a raucous debate about irrelevant details. (Not saying that's what's happening here, but.) Another form of the pattern is to just show off how smart the commenter is, disrupting the discussion in the process by getting caught up in details.

I should go dig into the Greek Sophists. They probably had a word for it. They definitely taught it as a technique.