Cliché Sayings, Part 1

Seen some of these clichés, or oft-repeated talking points, during my time on Reddit (RIP my account) and occasionally in the news media as well. It seems like someone said it, it spread, and it's now breathlessly repeated by everyone whenever they find themselves in a situation resembling the original speaker.

I'm going to do more of these threads, when I can cough-up more clichés. Understanding the reasoning (or lack thereof) behind these will let us handle them in real life when they're tossed our way.

1. The Logos Gambit: accusing someone of being a robot in order to discredit their argument.

Tatiana: Getting women into STEM starts with getting men to respect our presence there. My colleagues constantly belittled me with microaggressions, such as, "are the cleaning lady?", "do you know how to do this?" and "I think you're overreacting". The last of which is clear reference to a sexist trope of the overly emotional woman, juxtaposed with the cool and logical man. It's obvious from this that men in STEM are conditioned to be sexist.

Marcus: Your reasoning isn't valid. Firstly you're Jumping to Conclusions by suggesting that the first two questions are intended to be offensive when they aren't - you're new and they don't know your skills very well. Secondly, 'overreacting' is something both sexes can be guilty of. Lastly, you use a Non Sequitur to claim that men in STEM are sexist.

Tatiana: You can't reduce everything down to simple logic. The world isn't some math problem to be solved, or one big science lab experiment to be observed and hypothesised on. You need to take into account people's subjective lived experiences and personal feelings, too.

I know - and trust me, want to murder - people like Tati here. She made a blustering fool of herself by making generalisations based on anecdotal evidence, then backed off when challenged by Marcus and told him he was "reducing" the problem down to logic, making his refutation appear robotic and out-of-touch with how "the world" really is. A variation of this argument is claiming that, as humans don't act according to 'simple logic', trying to make a rational argument is futile.

2. *Technically* everything is X: making a word worthless by claiming it can describe anything.

Violet: Ugh, people are boycotting Wizard Entertainment because of what happened during that HearthRock tournament. I am sick and tired of politics in my video games. It's meant to be a form of escapism, man. Why do people try to politicise everything?

Younis: Technically, everything is political. This is because everything technically links back to politics. Making a stand against China now sends a clear signal to Wizard that we will not tolerate suppression of freeze peach against our pro gamers. Winnie the Pooh FTW!

I hate people like Younis. In fact, I want to slap sense into them. Making a tangential connection between everything and X, then claiming that everything = X, completely destroys the meaningfulness of the word - now anything can be considered political, even if it is highly divorced from any sort of political theory or decision-making - e.g., what I'm eating for breakfast. Younis is using the fallacy of Suppressed Correlative.

What do you make of my assessment?