Sea-Lioning

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About

Sea-Lioning is an Internet slang term referring to intrusive attempts at engaging an unwilling debate opponent by feigning civility and incessantly requesting evidence to back up their claims. The term was coined in September 2014 by anti-GamerGate Internet users to mock perceived online discussion tactics employed by GamerGate supporters.

Origin

On September 19th, 2014, artist David Malki published a comic titled "The Terrible Sea Lion" on his webcomic site Wondermark,^[1] which features a sea lion who intrudes on a private conversation to debate a woman saying she "could do without sea lions" (shown below).

Spread

On October 9th, Redditor Plaguearist submitted the Wondermark comment in a post titled "New term for GG behaviour – Sealioning?" to the /r/GamerGhazi^[7] subreddit. On October 20th, Kotaku writer Patricia Hernandez tweeted^[5] that she informed someone that had been "sealioned" in real life (shown below). On October 23rd, Wondermark^[6] published a blog post titled "'Sea Lion' Has Been Verbed," highlighting several tweets containing the term.

On November 20th, the anti-GamerGate blog Simplikation^[2] published an article titled "Why Sealioning is Bad," which argued that responding to "demands for evidence and answers to questions" was an "insidious trap" to waste people's time. On November 23rd, Redditor TheThing submitted a post to the /r/AMRsucks^[4] subreddit titled "Sea-lioning: A hip, new term to describe that teribble, horrible circumstance when you have to actually back up your statements with evidence." On November 25th, Twitter^[9] user Richard Olsen criticized the term as a means of killing a discussion when asked a challenging question.

Sea Lion Fund

On November 25th, a #GamerGate donation page was created on the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF) website, calling for GamerGate supporters to donate money for sea lion conservation. That day, the page was posted on the /gg/ board on 8chan, where a user suggested the sea lion be named "Ethics" and his habitat named "Games Journalism" (shown below).

On November 26th, Redditor catpor submitted the page to the /r/KotakuInAction^[8] subreddit. By the following day, the page received 100% of its $5,000 goal.