Summary
The Fallacy I chose is the Strawman Fallacy. This is seen at many levels. Lets say you make a statement saying you like pepperoni on your pizza more than you do mushrooms. I come on by and say, “why would you say mushrooms aren't good?” You didn’t make that statement, but my response made it to where it seems you did. This is a particularly interesting one because we see it every day on social media. In a time where it seems that opinions are much louder and more accessible due to the open nature of most social media sources. It causes for there to be a much greater likelihood of this fallacy occurring. We see this often, someone makes a statement, someone responds, and the individual responding can completely twist the meaning of the original statement for the convenience of the responder's argument. It is even more difficult to deal with in the case of a public forum, due to bystanders interpreting the original post through the response and not the context of the original writer's intention. We see it in public media sources as well, where a clip of an individual making a statement gets edited down to where it just states a point that a media source can use to benefit their argument against said individual, and sometimes just for malice. It is a particularly dangerous fallacy in this day and age due to the virality of media and how quickly people can lose their livelihoods due to things that were purposefully taken out of context for others benefit.
One thought on “Elliet Javier Conversation 7”
Hey Elliet, you’re right to point out how especially damaging this fallacy can be due to the nature of sensationalized social media. But I would argue that it is actually even worse in real-life conversations because of the lack of a previous record. If I make a statement such as the example you provided with the pepperoni pizza, the person that draws the strawman has an advantage due to the lack of a record about what was actually said. People easily forget such minor premises of any given argument, and the strawman maker benefits from the people not having remembered exactly what was said in regards to any one of these minor premises, and for this reason, they presume the strawman is what was actually said.