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Before I start, I would like to make some comments about that thread that inspired this. I must make it clear I still stand by what I said in that thread, though after doing some research in fallacies I do acknowledge that I didn't debate it very well. I have been questioning if I did make fallacies myself, which I don't really believe I did, but I'm still learning about this stuff so that may yet change. Also, contrary to that one user's comments I wasn't trying to claim that someone there made a fallacy. I do genuinely apoglize if I came across that way, though I have a hard time seeing how (also, as I said that guy was obviously trying to gaslight me). Really, the main reason I brought it up multiple times was because I simply found the idea fascinating. Point is, I wasn't trying to argue that someone there made a strawman fallacy, I simply was correcting their definition and then proceeded to lose focus. That was my bad regardless. Also, regarding these posts I plan to only release them every 24 hours to avoid flooding this thread with them. Of course, given how few posts this place gets the front page is probably still going to get filled with my posts. Also, I sorta apologize for my last post. I didn't intend it to be that long. I believe part of the reason why it was so was because I ended up bringing up three fallacies rather than just one. I'll be avoiding doing that, and I also may make posts about the latter two later simply to expand on them further. In particular I've learned a bit more about the 'appeal to authority' argument I brought up. I also suspect I may have at least partially misunderstood it, so there's that too. I also accidentially referred to the 'ad hominem' fallacy as a genetic fallacy. I think it would constitute a type of genetic fallacy, though not all genetic fallacies are also ad hominem fallacies. That said, I think I'll get to the topic now. In my eyes, the no true scotsman fallacy may be the most rampant and damaging fallacy in our society today. To put it simply, its feeding polarization. Simply put, its a fallacy where one disregards counter-examples. Let's say Bob claims that no true scotsman drinks bear. Billy then retorts that he's a scotsman and he drinks beer. Bob then replies by saying that means he's not actually a true scotsman, thus his original claim still holds. This I see as the most rampant and possibly damaging in the current era. Anyone who isn't hard left or hard right often gets accused of being part of the opposite faction. For instance, if you're anti-abortion, people will all assume you're right-wing and misogynistic. Of course, these don't coincide; there are left-wing anti-abortionists, in fact the democratic party was ousting them for a while. Basically, they were making the no true scotsman fallacy, basically claiming you're not actually a democrat if you oppose abortion. Republicans could be said to be doing the same thing in the past with the 'rhino' concept (short for Republicans In Name Only). Also, there are entire feminist organizations who are anti-abortion, and some date back to the 70s. Are those feminist organizations actually misogynists? That seems rather unlikely. So, people assume you aren't actually a part of the party you identify with unless you believe all of x, y, z, etc... This is obviously a really serious problem for centrists. However, in reality most people are centrists to some degree. Its rare for everyone to believe with ALL of the tenets of their party. This means that most people could actually suffer the consequences of this fallacy if they speak their minds. Even if you can make an argument that opposing x IS compatible with your party, people probably won't believe you anyway since in their eyes you're not actually a part of the party anyway. As this example demonstrates, this also means the no true scotsman fallacy has encouraged self-censorship. People who hold contrasting views with the rest of their party must remain silent to avoid being ousted, or worse yet branded a member of the opposite party (that itself is part of another fallacy which I will also bring up in another post, just so we know). So in summary, this fallacy is wide-spread, its feeding political polarization (though its obviously not the only factor, just so we're clear), and its discouraging debate by making people wary of expressing contrasting opinions within their own circles.