@leeloo @ahltorp and some people are speaking English as a second language and some people are tired and some people have me talking ill esses and some people were raised by assholes but are trying to learn using the only language they know and some people are genuinely trolls and some people are very very literal about everything and some people are poets. The world is big.
Jun 2, 2026, 8:17 PM@SomeVeganCheeseIsOk @ahltorp
Yes, English is my second language. But none of those have anything to do with asking gotcha-questions.
@leeloo @ahltorp Where, here, is the gotcha question ? I just don't see it. I see a question, but characterizing it maliciously seems like an extreme over reaction to me.
Maybe find someone in your offline life who is likely to give you an unbiased take on this, and talk through this thread with them.
@SomeVeganCheeseIsOk @leeloo Even if something isn't meant as a gotcha question, if it looks identical to a gotcha question, it does harm in the same way as a gotcha question.
Subjecting victims to microagressions might not be intentional, but it is still something that should be called out.
@ahltorp @leeloo I struggle to see the harm in questions. You are ALWAYS free to ignore them. And that's fine! Actively attacking people asking questions seems to me to do a LOT more harm, overall. It's a terrible thing, to attack people for asking questions. If someone is a troll, ignoring them is far more frustrating to them than being yelled at.
@SomeVeganCheeseIsOk @leeloo We have a specific term for that: #sealioning
@ahltorp ....do you not know how to use the block and report buttons?
"It is ok to preemptively bully people who ask questions I think are in bad faith" is how you end up bullying a LOT of people asking questions in good faith. The main outcome is that you become a bully with a shitty justification for your desperate need to feel like you did something.
@SomeVeganCheeseIsOk What good does the block and report buttons do against sealioning?
Jun 4, 2026, 1:15 PM@SomeVeganCheeseIsOk @ahltorp
If the person is genuinely confused why we shouldn't do cosmetic surgery on people without their consent, fine, but maybe the fediverse is not the place to have basic consent explained.
However, they left out the word "cosmetic" as if they were preparing some maga-style gotcha conflating cosmetic and lifesaving surgery.
This may be an outlier, but I believe there are way more maga/afd/queerphobes in this world than people who managed to grow up without ever learning that you can't just go around harming other people uf you feel like it, so statistically, the gotcha explanation is more likely. And when I then started asking questions without taking the bait, he deflected exactly like a maga troll would.
I've seen them before, I've tried talking sense into them (never successfully), and this question looked exactly like one of them. Yes, there are other possible explanations, but statistically...
Meanwhile, this discussion has managed to attract actual trolls, so keeping my guard up was not without reason.
@leeloo @ahltorp thank you for taking the time to actually answer. My perspective here is that all questions must be treated like they are genuine until someone refuses to use logic or learn. The reason is one I noted elsewhere: it's way, way too easy to get in bad habits of assuming malice and preemptively bullying people for asking questions. Our judgement is not infallable. A *safe* way to not hurt the innocent is to block or ignore questions you aren't sure of.