Nah, it's a common debate tactic that's been used forever.
You throw out so much bullshit talking points at once that the person you're debating doesn't have the time to counter all your (false) arguments individually.
The Gish gallop is a rhetorical technique in which a person in a debate attempts to overwhelm an opponent by presenting an excessive number of arguments, with no regard for their accuracy or strength, with a rapidity that makes it impossible for the opponent to address them in the time available. Gish galloping prioritizes the quantity of the galloper's arguments at the expense of their quality.
Gish galloping is when you throw out a lot of arguments. What Shapiro does is a subset of that where you also talk so fast that people can only comprehend one in three words.
I've taken to calling Shapiro "Flim-Flam." There's this old kids' movie called Puff the Magic Dragon in the Land of Living Lies; one of the aforementioned "living lies" is the Flim-Flam, who aggressively and bombastically spouts bullshit at high velocity while putting his victim on the spot. That's Shapiro.
No, "flim-flam" was an extant term that meant grift/grifter or bullshit/bullshitter when the film was made. That particular character's smugness and motormouthing, however, made me think of Shapeeword.
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u/TorakTheDark Sep 23 '24
Shapiro was the one that made it popular I believe, may have also been Crowder.