mumblingsage:

beinggayisreallyexpensive:

Why do (esp white) men love having fights about politics where they change topics 6x to confuse you and then try and make you look dumb because you can’t jump between the points bc you’re too busy arguing the separate distinct points bc you thought that’s what the fight was about

“The Gish gallop allows a debater to hit their opponent with a rapid series of many specious arguments, half-truths and misrepresentations in a short space of time, which makes it impossible for the opponent to refute all of them within the format of a formal debate. In practice, each point raised by the “Gish galloper” takes considerably more time to refute or fact-check than it did to state in the first place,^[4] which wastes the opponent’s time and can cast doubt about their debating ability in an audience unfamiliar with the technique, especially if no independent fact-checking is involved.^[5] …If one is familiar with an opponent who is known to use the Gish gallop, the technique can be countered somewhat by preempting and refuting their commonly used arguments before they have the chance.^[7]“ 

Or sometimes it could help to point out that they’re doing it, though I suspect the kind of person who does this is the kind of person who responds to “Wow, you’re Gish galloping” with “ad hominem!”