Sealioning

Sealioning (also sea-lioning and sea lioning) is a type of trolling or harassment that consists of pursuing people with relentless requests for evidence, often tangential or previously addressed, while maintaining a pretense of civility and sincerity ("I'm just trying to have a debate"), and feigning ignorance of the subject matter.

[5][6][7][8] It may take the form of "incessant, bad-faith invitations to engage in debate",[9] and has been likened to a denial-of-service attack targeted at human beings.

American academic philosopher Walter Sinnott-Armstrong discussed the term in his book Think Again: How to Reason and Argue, saying: Internet trolls sometimes engage in what is called 'sealioning'.

[2][22] "Sea lion" was quickly verbed, and noting this, Malki posted on his own Wondermark site, "I'm happy that it's resonated with so many people".

[24][25][3] In a 2016 study published in First Monday focusing on users of the Gamergate subreddit /r/KotakuInAction, participants were surveyed about what they believed constituted "harassment".

Participants were quoted stating that "expressions of sincere disagreement" were considered harassment by opponents of the forum and that the term sealioning was used to silence legitimate requests for proof.

A comic strip featuring a talking sealion pestering a woman
The Terrible Sea Lion by David Malki (19 September 2014, No. 1062) from which the term "sealioning" originates [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] [ 4 ]
A sealion pestering a human feeder. The overlayed text bubble for the sealion reads: "I wold like to have a civil debate about your political views. Do you have evidence to back up your opinions?". The human replies: "Dude, leave me alone".
Sealioning often takes the form of bad-faith attempts to engage in debate under the guise of civility.