This is anywhere on the internet.

Equally common, unfortunately, is people who don’t state their point, they just lay out the pieces and expect you to put it together, but then if you say something bad about it suddenly that’s “not what I said”. Schrodinger’s point.

I’ve developed a response to comments that do this saying-it-but-not-saying-it thing, and while I try to judge sincerity, there are false positives. An okay approach I’ve found is just to ask people to clarify: if they say something reasonable they’re genuine, and if they dodge the question they’re a troll or someone who doesn’t want to admit they believe something bad.

Bravery is leaving both the ifunny and imgflip watermarks.

While I don’t want to deny that people try to put words into others mouths, I think context is still important. It is possible and even quite typical to send messages beyond the meaning of the actual words used in a statement and simply playing dumb when someone calls you out for doing that is also not a great look.

Think of going to a waffles-convention and just walking around claiming that you, in fact, like pancakes. Of course people are going to assume you’re a troll.

It’s important to think of different perspectives and at least consider if something you meant in a very innocent way might still not sit right with someone else. Certainly not easy to do, mistakes will always happen, but honestly trying makes a huge difference imo.

A large portion of the world is experiencing political polarization. I see the same things happening on Lemmy happen on other social media websites.

The “if you don’t agree with me you must have the exact opposite opinion” approach to debate seems to be more a problem of the participants than the platform.

Let me see in reality:

I use a camera to capture picture

Yep that’s one of my pet peeves about the Internet. People love to try to put words in your mouth. It gets a bit tiring having to tell every one of those jabronis that I never said any of those words, and they should re-read what I did actually write instead.

And yet, you assumed an image on catbox would work on my device. Interesting.

Me: “I like pancakes”

Lemmy: “Only a shitlib western imperialist would think that. Read more Lenin.”

Why do you think you’re better than us?

What…. This is on par with any kind of internet discourse. It’s pretty much why I hardly ever post prior to Lemmy. It doesn’t matter how well articulated the post, SOMEONE will find the need to correct or clarify unnecessarily.

I like to insult and block these people. My fear of course, with Lemmy being so small, is I will block everyone. Then again, that’s still better than dealing with illiterate, contrarian assholes

TBF, I understand this annoying kind of ‘reading into it’. at the same time, if someone starts dropping dogwhistles or starts dancing around something in a convo, i am definitely gonna read into that shit.

Prior to the US election, there were many people that did this exact thing- only it was “oh yeah? Well… you support genocide!”

They’re rarely here anymore. Which is what was predicted that typically warranted their response to begin with.

I see more Motte-and-bailey fallacy.

I see less “I like pancakes” and more “I think pancakes are superior to waffles” from the first commenter.

Then the second commenter responds, “So you hate waffles?”

Then the first commenter retreats to “No, I just like pancakes. Why are you assuming what I’m saying? Don’t you understand I’m being nuanced?”

Also, nuance is one of the more recent words to have a new usage like literally, which can now mean figuratively. When people say their argument is nuanced they mean it is good or correct. It reminds me of the use objective to describe a person to pretend they don’t have biases to incorrectly validate their arguments.