nutpicking

talking about idiots

TRANSLATION

nutpicking = die extremsten Mitglieder einer Gruppe herausgreifen und so tun, als würden sie die gesamte Gruppe vertreten

STATISTICS

IN THE PRESS

“It’s not NUTPICKING if it’s in the New York Times, I swear.” 

The Edge of the American West

Did you
know?

nutpicking
noun (showing disapproval)

- the act of picking the most extreme members of a group and pretending they represent the group

MacMillan Dictionary

In scholarly circles, “nutpicking” is called the weak-man fallacy


ORIGIN

“Last night I held a contest to create a name for the moronic* practice of trawling through open comment threads in order to find a few wackjobs**  who can be held up as evidence that liberals are nuts…, the winner is: NUTPICKING”

Kevin Drum on August 11, 2006

*moronic = schwachsinnig, **wackjobs = Spinner


An example of nutpicking would be anti-feminists painting people who support feminism as “feminazis” by highlighting examples of ridiculous behaviour from select individuals, rather than critiquing points addressed in mainline feminist writings.

In other words: every movement has crazies, but not every movement is crazy.


NUTPICKING is, cleverly, both a variation on the word “cherry picking” and a portmanteau of “nut” and “nitpicking”.

Sources:
- Casey Aikin - “Straw Men, Weak Men, and Hollow Men”
- RationalWiki


Practice OWAD in an English conversation, say something like:

“Interesting isn’t it how a new word like NUTPICKING can raise public awareness about important issues?”

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Paul Smith

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