Politics

Straw Man Tweets

Posted on by Tom

It occurred to me while browsing through my Twitter timelines that there are a lot of tweets that have built-in straw man logical fallacies. They usually follow one of these forms, which I’ve made up:

Them: Some ridiculous claim that doesn’t make sense.
Us: That’s a ridiculous claim that doesn’t make sense!

“The moon is made of green cheese.” That’s dumb! Everybody knows the
moon is made of blue cheese!

Dear people who say silly things: You look foolish when you say silly things.

Basically it’s where a claim is made and attributed to some mysterious, unnamed opposition (a “straw man”), and then a rebuttal is made to the claim. The person writing or sharing the tweet comes off sounding like a hero for “eviscerating” the claims of their adversaries. The only problem is, naturally, there is no evidence given that anyone ever made the adversarial claim in the first place. It sounds vaguely like something you might have heard before, or like something that your ideal adversary might say, but that’s about it.

Many of these kinds of tweets get retweeted into my timeline. Some activist or another somewhere makes up something in the hope that they will be spread far and wide and influence public opinion. It’s the Twitter equivalent of fake ads on Facebook.

I mention this not to shame anyone, but because I feel like we as a country and a species don’t teach people how to think critically anymore. One of the ways to be educate yourself is to recognize the patterns used by propagandists and con-artists (and advertisers!). One of those patterns is the straw man logical fallacy.

The point is not to *discount* straw man arguments out of hand. (The “dear people who say silly things” example above is 100% true.) Instead, be extra cautious and skeptical of them, especially when they come from a stranger or from someone who has a vested interest in influencing people a certain way. (For example, RUSSIANS.)

Here are some real-life examples that were retweeted into my timeline today.

 

,
Tom