Just asking questions

Just asking questions (also known as JAQing off) is a way of attempting to make wild accusations acceptable (and hopefully not legally actionable) by framing them as questions rather than statements. It shifts the burden of proof to one's opponent; rather than laboriously having to prove that all politicians are reptoid scum, one can pull out one single odd piece of evidence and force the opponent to explain why the evidence is wrong.

Cogito ergo sum
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The tactic is closely related to loaded questions or leading questions (which are usually employed when using it), Gish Gallops (when asking a huge number of rapid-fire questions without regard for the answers) and Argumentum ad nauseam (when asking the same question over and over in an attempt to overwhelm refutations).

It should be noted that accusing one's opponent of "just asking questions" is a common derailment tactic and a way of poisoning the well. Asking questions in and of itself is not invalid.

The subjective nature of this charge, and its consequent ripeness for abuse, means that deploying it can be a very inflammatory move. One side may put forward the accusation that the other side is cynically "just asking questions" and believe that they are acting in good faith, and the other side may equally strongly believe that they were asking genuine questions in good faith and the first person is the one acting in bad faith.

Strategy

The purpose of this argument method is to keep asking leading questions to attempt to influence spectators' views, regardless of whatever answers are given. The term is derived from the frequent claim by the questioner that they are "just asking questions," albeit in a manner much the same as political push polls. Additionally, this tactic is a way for a crank to escape the burden of proof behind extraordinary claims.[1]

In some cases, it also helps hide the nebulousness or absurdity of the questioner's own views. For example, a 9/11 truther may ask questions about perceived irregularities in the collapse, Larry Silverstein saying "pull it," and the plane that hit the Pentagon. If turned back around on the truther, the implication is that they think that the plot involved numerous bizarre complications (rigging three buildings with explosives, making an on-the-spot decision to instruct the FDNY to detonate one of them, replacing a plane with a missile and later littering the Pentagon with plane wreckage). By not having to propose their own hypothesis, they can come across as smoothly winning a debate, since the other person is unable to answer a "just being asked" question. In fact, it can be very useful to "just ask questions" of woos, inasmuch as getting woos to put a hypothesis forward (or even just admitting to believing something crazy) can be a worthy accomplishment.

The questioner may claim they are playing devil's advocate. This is frequently to advance an odious position with no shortage of existing advocates.

Caveats

First and foremost, the Socratic method (asking questions you know the likely answer to in order to stimulate critical thinking) can be a legitimate mode of discourse. And in some cases, a person may simply not feel confident enough in their position to make an assertion, so they instead ask a question in order to gather more information or elicit others' thoughts before making up their mind about a particular stance.

Second, it should be clear that "just asking questions" only applies when the answers are already well known, where the question embodies a point refuted a thousand times, and where the questioner exhibits willful ignorance. If, for example, someone phrased their political argument as a series of questions -- but provided sources to back up said questions, or has raised logical arguments in said questions -- then it is not enough to dismiss the argument as "just asking questions".

Betteridge's law of headlines

A law that covers much Internet "journalism". The Daily Fail is a serial offender.[2][3]

Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word "no." The reason why journalists use that style of headline is that they know the story is probably bullshit, and don’t actually have the sources and facts to back it up, but still want to run it.

JAQing off

The JREF forums call it "JAQing off." "Marquis de Carabas" coined the acronymous term[4] after they had dealt with one too many 9/11 truthers,[5] with this later description by "VespaGuy":[6]

JAQing off - 1. the act of spouting accusations while cowardly hiding behind the claim of "just asking questions." 2. asking questions and ignoring the answers. "He said he was going to present evidence, but instead he was just JAQing off."

Sealioning

Sealioning involves jumping into a conversation with endless polite, reasonable questions and demands for answers, usually of entry-level topics far below the actual conversation (e.g. "please prove sexism exists"). This tactic differs little from harassment; instead of discussion, the point is to derail discussion, receive criticism (for their ignorance) so as to look like a victim, or to make someone feel overwhelmed and quit talking. It is comparable to running a filibusterFile:Wikipedia's W.svg (or perhaps a filibustering technique) and preventing anything getting done. The nature of Twitter makes it particularly easy to sealion— since everything is extremely compressed.

Sealioning meshes well with moving the goalpost in order to derail the conversation while giving the appearance of a reasonable inquiry. (e.g. after the commenter provides concrete examples of sexism, the sealion replies with "You still haven't answered my question. Please prove how this incident is sexist.")

A particularly toxic thing about sealioning is that people who are genuine newbies asking serious questions are easy to mistake for sealions.

The term originally gained prominence for describing the Gamergate strategy of flooding people with a barrage of demands for proof that Gamergate was harassing people.

Frequent question-askers
  • Loose Change is a great example of "just asking questions." Replete with semi-truths and highly questionable leaps of logic, this documentary purports to show that the US government was behind the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
  • Glenn Beck is one of the most prolific JAQers. His technique of raising issues without actively accusing anyone was parodied on the Did Glenn Beck Rape and Murder a Young Girl in 1990 website,[7] which Beck tried and failed to shut down in 2009 by filing a dispute over the domain name. Beck's questioning technique is also parodied in the South Park episode "Dances With Smurfs," where Eric Cartman — anchoring his own Beck-style television show — carefully ends a tirade of accusations against class president Wendy Testaburger with the question "Or does she?"[8]
  • Equally notorious is Neil Cavuto, who has been known to JAQ off with lines like "Have the Democrats Forgotten the Lessons of 9/11?" or "Is the Liberal Media Helping to Fuel Terror?" Jon Stewart gave a name not to the concept of JAQing off but to what might elsewhere be known as a question mark: the "Cavuto Mark."[9] Stewart subsequently "just asked" if Cavuto's mother was a whore. Not that he meant anything by it. Obviously.
  • Fox News — as in "Up next, is Obama really a fascist, Nazi, socialist, gay, Muslim, atheist Kenyan?"
  • The Ancient Aliens TV series, whose narrator asks at least five times per show "Could it be, as some ancient alien researchers believe...?"
  • Donald Trump is fond of just asking questions.[10] Questions like "who is doing the raping?"[11]
  • Gilad Atzmon uses this to dog whistle to Holocaust deniers and other Anti-Semites. "65 years after the liberation of Auschwitz we should reclaim our history and ask why? Why were the Jews hated? Why did European people stand up against their next door neighbours? Why are the Jews hated in the Middle East, surely they had a chance to open a new page in their troubled history? If they genuinely planned to do so, as the early Zionists claimed, why did they fail? Why did America tighten its immigration laws amid the growing danger to European Jews? We should also ask for what purpose do the holocaust denial laws serve? What is the holocaust religion there to conceal?"[12]
  • In 2002, Hamas leader Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi said, "People always talk about what the Germans did to the Jews, but the true question is, 'What did the Jews do to the Germans?'"[13]
  • In the Rwandan genocide, Simon Bikindi's loudspeaker broadcasts to militia asking "have you killed the Tutsis here?" were held to contribute to a finding of incitement to genocide.[14]
  • Many GOP senators framed their support for Trump's false claims of election fraud as this. For example, Josh Hawley saying "Millions of voters concerned about election integrity deserve to be heard".[15]
gollark: Well, if it's been hacked by someone they won't be paying for it. It's probably going to be ethereum or something now, I don't know.
gollark: But it's hip and cool to have your toaster be mining bitcoin!
gollark: I think we need an off-the-shelf solution to adding blinky LEDs and shininess to existing non-IoT products... hmm.
gollark: Just stick some blinky LEDs on the outside.
gollark: I'm sure you can buy an aluminium case.

See also

References
  1. "Whose Burden of Proof Is It?", Screw Loose Change
  2. Betteridge's law of headlinesFile:Wikipedia's W.svg
  3. TechCrunch: Irresponsible journalism, Technovia
  4. "Can't wait to call them JAQ-offs on Saturday."
  5. 9/11 Truther Dictionary
  6. The dangers of JAQing off in public, io9
  7. Archived here: "We're not accusing Glenn Beck of raping and murdering a young girl in 1990 - in fact, we think he didn't! But we can't help but wonder, since he has failed to deny these horrible allegations. Why won't he deny that he raped and killed a young girl in 1990?"
  8. Can be watched here (if you live in the US) or here (with overdubbing)
  9. Jon Stewart Explains the 'Cavuto Mark', DeLong
  10. "Donald Trump Is Just Asking The Question: How The GOP Presidential Candidate Spreads His Conspiracy Theories", May 5, 2016.
  11. CNN, "Trump defends inflammatory comments, asks 'Who is doing the raping?'", July 2, 2015.
  12. "Truth, History and Integrity by Gilad Atzmon"
  13. Goldberg, Jeffrey (4 August 2014). "What Would Hamas Do If It Could Do Whatever It Wanted?". The Atlantic. Retrieved 9 May 2020.
  14. Gordon, Gregory S. (2017). Atrocity Speech Law: Foundation, Fragmentation, Fruition. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-061270-2.
  15. Cameron Peters, A GOP plan to challenge election results is splintering the Republican conference, Vox 3 Jan. 2021
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