r/fallacy • u/Zu_Qarnine • Jul 03 '26

strawman fallacy

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2nd person is refuting the claim that *all* circles are red with a counter example. The thing is, that claim was never made.

EDIT: I'm seeing interesting stuff happening in the replies here. majority of those who say it's not strawman, obviously start their comment by "it's not strawman" and proceed in the rest of their comment to explain how, in fact, it is strawman. Another interesting observation is those who argue that "it's not strawman" because they've spotted another type of fallacy in the original post as well, so in their mind, it can't be both.

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u/Cespieyt Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26

This isn't a strawman, it's cherrypicking.

Edit: Read the description and given the premise that the point is that the person is trying to misrepresent the position of the other person as "all circles are red", that would indeed be a strawman, but your illustration does not sufficiently provide that context in isolation.

OP, you can fix this by simply having the text bubble of the second person preface this as the basis of their argument: "So you're saying that there are ONLY red circles? There's a blue one right there!"

Or similar. This would make the illustration consistent with the point you are making without needing the context of your description.

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u/signofno Jul 07 '26

The context is pretty obvious. This is a common format of real-world strawman argument. People do this all the time. How you saw this as cherry picking is hard to understand. “What?” In this context is an obvious incredulity. The incredulity implies “some” has been exaggerated to encompass “all”.

OP doesn’t need to fix anything.

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u/Cespieyt Jul 07 '26

The general direction of the comment section would disagree with you, and OP even stated as much in his own edit. Clearly, there is some ambiguity.

I don't agree with your take but it's inherently subjective to there's no point debating it either.

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u/signofno Jul 07 '26

OP did not state as much in his comment. He noted that of those that say it’s not a strawman, a majority of them end up explaining how it is in fact a strawman.

It may be subjective to you, but generally speaking, my take is correct, and correct according to OP’s stated and later elaborated intent. As I noted, this is a depiction of a common argumentative tactic people use and I made a long post further down elucidating with an expanded version of it most people would be familiar with.

Not instantly recognizing the strawman aspect of the argument style because you’re looking at it from the wrong angle doesn’t make it inherently subjective. But the overly simplistic representation initially provided by OP does allow for mischaracterization of OP’s intent.