Sealioning "disguises itself as a sincere attempt to learn & communicate..." but = incessant, bad-faith questions. It is a tactic designed to exhaust a target community's patience, attention, & communicative effort in an attempt to portray the target community as unreasonable. 1/ 
Sealioning in its current incarnation is a pretty new phenomenon, because in part it depends on the nature of social media: while this may be the sealion's umpteenth communique with the same person or tight-knit community, outsiders may only see the point at which the target 2/
"inexplicably" runs out of patience. Because drama is what is shared/amplified (by both the target community AND the sealion), it's this explosion that then becomes the message, the last word. 3/
Sealions are moved by a burning desire to justify their own, pre-existing beliefs. Often, some event has conjured cognitive dissonance about their current beliefs, & they are seeking to renew their certainty through argument. 4/ rationalwiki.org/wiki/Backfire_…
Sealions are almost always moved by beliefs & biases about PEOPLE. What they are almost always trying to prove is the superiority of the group to which they belong, over the target community. If the target 'breaks', the sealion feels a renewed moral & logical superiority. 5/
It can be challenging to tell a sealion apart from an honest seeker of knowledge. If you're in doubt, I recommend answering the question w/a source that supports your premise and leaving the conversation. 6/
Real engagement = a closely-related question or two, followed by doing research on their own. They will not shop around ad infinitum in hopes someone will give them more strawman-friendly answer to the same question. 7/7
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