I was kind of wondering if that could be the case but I’ve just found the internet to be far more enjoyable if you just assume everyone is here in good faith. It might be a little naive but I’d much rather assume good intentions where bad ones exist than the opposite if I’m at all uncertain.

I think the sea lion in the comic is being criticized for being overly persistent in demanding evidence and a debate with people who never wanted to discuss anything with him. But yeah it’s a bit weird because they start the interaction by publicly criticizing the sea lion, so of course he wants to defend himself. And while it’s obviously over the line to pursue people demanding they debate you about something, that’s not really a thing that happens in online discourse—it’s easy enough to just ignore someone. So I’ve never found it a concept that makes much sense to me.

I’m probably not the right person to answer this because I think sealioning is another nebulous term that can mean a variety of things, similar to trolling. If you want to call someone out for bad behavior, I think you need to be specific about what they did in clear terms that everyone will understand.

But, to my understanding, demanding evidence for something perceived as obvious or self evident in a seemingly polite but deliberate attempt to annoy or waste people’s time is one form of sealioning. I’m not saying that’s what you did but perhaps it’s what they believe.

But that’s kind of the issue I was discussing here. What’s obvious to me may not be to you and vice-versa. So it’s hard or impossible to know if that’s what’s happening in any specific example.