| For reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting "Gaslighting or gas-lighting is a form of manipulation through persistent denial, misdirection, contradiction, and lying in an attempt to destabilize and delegitimize a target." There's a clear difference between that and calling out (EDIT for clarification: what I believe to be) incorrect information, and my admittedly-biased opinion is that my previous two comments in response to your own are squarely in the latter camp versus the former. I'd also hardly call one or two comments "persistent", though - again - my viewpoint is obviously biased in my favor. I'll admit that pulling a [citation needed] was excessively snarky, though. I'm sorry. I ought to know better than to be a jerk, no matter how right I think I am. ---- With that said, "just Google it" (and similar approaches, like linking to a search engine query or some snarky wrapper thereof) is a very poor rhetorical technique in general; as I've already demonstrated, it's not guaranteed to actually prove one's point, and it reeks of either or both of two hidden meanings: 1. "I don't really care enough about the topic to give a meaningful citation, so I'm just going to tell the other party to find citations oneself" 2. "I don't actually have any source for the information I've provided (maybe I did once upon a time, but I sure don't anymore), so I'm going to tell the other party to 'just Google it' and hope that said other party is somehow impressed by the number of search results regardless of the sites in question or what the linked pages actually say" Thus, it's generally a good idea to avoid those potential hidden meanings and just provide an actual source. |