If it wasn’t meant to be analogous to prejudice based on immutable characteristics why did they make it prejudice based on immutable characteristics? Sea lions in the universe the comic takes place in are clearly sapient people, capable of complex thought, communication in English, and the ability to navigate human society. The person in the comic isn’t being “metaphorically racist” or expressing something “analogous” to racism; they’re simply being racist.

As you say, what the sea lion is doing is harassment, it is hostile, it is aggressive, and the racist depicted in the comic deserves it. It is model behavior, we should make people dread the idea of expressing racist views in public.

If you substitute the racist opinion for a mundane one, of course the comic changes and the sea lion becomes unreasonable. You’ve completely changed what the sea lion was responding to. If you swap all the Nazis in Wolfenstein with peaceful dogs who aren’t doing anything, now it’s a game about being a cop. Now you’re being completely unreasonable by shooting them. But that doesn’t tell us anything about the validity of shooting the original Nazis. When we look at the original context of Wolfenstein, shooting the Nazis is completely reasonable because they’re Nazis and not dogs.

Furthermore, even if we do substitute the racism expressed in the comic for a more mundane opinion, like enjoying pineapple on pizza, it still seems inapplicable to internet arguments. A significant part of the reason the sea lion is unreasonable is its persistence. At no point do the other people in the comic engage with the sea lion but it won’t stop harassing them. But on Lemmy, this behavior is so universally punished that it almost never happens because it would obviously get you permabanned from your home instance no matter what it is. Most people I’ve seen accused of “sealioning” are simply replying, one comment at a time, to people who are actively engaging with them. You can’t be “sealioning” unless you are following someone who isn’t engaging with you somewhere else, meaning in this context a different thread, to demand further engagement in the conversation. Which, again, would get you banned so fast that I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen it happen on Lemmy.

On no level do most accusations of “sealioning” seem to hold up to scrutiny, in my opinion.

The sealion in the original comic is completely correct, which makes me very suspicious of anyone who dismisses someone for “sealioning” and as you say, it usually is just used as an excuse not to engage with what someone is saying.

The sealion in the comic overheard someone being racist against them, and stepped in to say, “Hey, why are you being racist?” And for some reason is wrong because… they’re persistent? Or because they’re annoying? How is that not literally just every “anti-woke” argument?

I literally already explained that in the comment you’re replying to. The sea lion should have done something bad to deserve being criticized.

That just doesn’t work, because the sea lion’s behavior in the comic is entirely reasonable, and it is the other characters who are being unreasonable. If the point of the comic is that the sea lion’s behavior is bad, they should have actually made the sea lion do something bad instead of call out someone being racist against him

not a racist conversation, because sea lions are not sentient beings despite what is about to happen

sea lions literally are sentient beings in the context of the comic. the only justification the comic gives for why sea lions are bad requires them being sentient beings so that they can speak up against random racist tirades about them.

are you literate

It’s just obviously not about all the stuff that you seem to think it’s about.

But it literally is? You’re the one coming up with weird interpretations about “what if it was actually about xyz”

What is actually happening in the comic is that a character is being racist and the victim of that racism is portrayed as being wrong and annoying for calling out the racism. That’s literally what’s happening in the comic. It doesn’t require any kind of gymnastics or interpretation, that’s the surface level reading of what is occurring in the comic.

Racism justifies harassment and home invasion?

Yeah. Not gonna cry over what the victims of racism do to racists.

and more about the harassment veiled in false civility as a means of silencing discussion.

How is the sea lion silencing discussion? They weren’t discussing anything, they were having a racist circlejerk. The racist lady said a racist thing and the sea lion invited discussion by asking, “Why did you say that racist thing?” and then they refused to actually explain why they’re racist against sea lions, treating it as self-evident that being racist against sea lions is correct and thus that it is unreasonable to question it.

Pretend he’s not a sea lion, but a conservative

He can’t choose not to be a sea lion. This is kind of incoherent. “Pretend he’s not black, but a conservative.” This sea lion could also be conservative, that doesn’t really have anything to do with the fact that he’s being criticized for immutable properties he was born with, not for anything of substance.

I gotta be honest, the sea lion is not the bad guy in this comic. Lady randomly says some racist shit, and a member of the group she’s being racist against calls her out for being racist. And then the fact that the sea lion called the racist out is apparently justification for the initial racist statement.

Yo based

I literally just use normal Firefox with normal ublock origin on my phone

Because hexbear is full of socialists and most instances are full of rabid pro-genocide liberals.

You only got replies from hexbear haters so let me balance it out a bit. Hexbear is by far the most LGBT+ friendly instance in the fediverse and has a supermajority of queer users. They’re aggressively anti-bigotry in all its forms and are extremely happy to educate and engage in discussions as long as you approach them in good faith.

Most people who go out of their way to shit talk them in the wild are just mad hexbear banned them for saying some racist or homophobic shit

Hexbear is older than most of the fediverse, and didn’t have federation enabled for years. It’s a very self-sufficient community.