They came for Dani Behr, I said she's over there, behind the wardrobe

[celestialweasel]

I usually avoid thinking about / commenting on Internet bollocks (TM) but I really don't understand the sea lion cartoon  / sea lioning at all http://wondermark.com/1k62/ Or rather, I see what it is supposed to mean but it seems vacuous in exactly the same way as the Pastor Niemöller quote

Comments

I don't think it's what the sealions are saying that makes them GGers etc

[jinty]

I think it's the fact they keep on coming and stopping you from doing anything else, intruding even into intimate spaces like homes and even bedrooms. The upperty women/mins may intrude on convos rightly left to etc etc in public spaces but don't as a rule follow those mens back to their own spaces (or not much - sometimes, yes).

[celestialweasel]

Interesting. So with the deleted comment and your comment we have 3 interpretations from 3 people. I hadn't read it as being a literal intrusion. My assumption as to what it's intended to be getting at was pompous drive-by commenting - this http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/sea-lioning seems to read a bit more into it, somewhere between your interpretation and mine. The fact that people have so divergent ideas about what it's supposed to mean suggests to me that it's not a very good metaphor.
Hmm.

[jinty]

I might not have been as clear as I wanted to be. The sealions in the strip are literally intrusive, I didn't mean that the GGaters are literally following you into your literal home, but that they would come back to your own blog and home in on you even when what you said was posted elsewhere. But also the element where the sealion was asking for evidence of any time a sealion had been mean to her - very GG-like, and just being polite in words doesn't mean the sealion wasn't actually being rude in their persistence.

It doesn't have to be a good metaphor I don't think. Clearly the original strip has pushed people's buttons in terms of readers recognizing relevantly similar behaviour, and the term has taken on a life of its own now so that's what it's coming to mean, outside of the strip itself.

[celestialweasel]

Well, in some cases I think they have been intrusive, probably not quite THAT intrusive as far as I know.
In that case I think we both think it means more or less the same thing - there is someone in fandom as in 'the' fandom who is very prone to doing this on LJ - I suspect he does some searches / has automatic ones set up on various terms and then wades in, somewhat ignoring the context of the discussion.