Dark Rhetoric Series – The Game of Definitions: When Meaning Becomes a Maze

When reason fails to persuade, some retreat into semantics. This episode explores the game of definitions — a rhetorical tactic that twists clarity into confusion. By constantly redefining words, manipulators trap conversations in endless loops, transforming truth-seeking into a contest of control.

🔑 Key Takeaways

• The game of definitions transforms dialogue into a labyrinth designed to exhaust and confuse.
• Semantics can become a shield against accountability when clarity threatens control.
• True understanding requires shared meaning, not linguistic victory.

💬 Featured Quotes

• 0:00:17 — “One of the more exhausting and complex techniques in dark rhetoric is the game of definitions.”
• 0:00:38 — “It’s not meant to move the conversation forward, but to control it completely.”
• 0:00:50 — “You’ll hear people say things like, ‘Well, it depends on what you mean by X.’”
• 0:01:05 — “Endless redefining becomes a form of power — a way to make understanding impossible.”

🔗 Explore Related Episodes

• Dark Rhetoric Series – Baiting: How Provocation Becomes Power
  Examines how emotional manipulation turns reaction into control.
• Dark Rhetoric Series – Ad Hominem: How Ego Replaces Evidence
  Explores how personal attack replaces honest argument and evades accountability.
• Dark Rhetoric Series – Gatekeeping: How Power Hides Behind Standards
  Reveals how self-appointed arbiters define who belongs and who doesn’t.

Dynamic Inserts

Creators and Guests

Host

Brian Mattocks

Host and Founder of A Mason's Work - a podcast designed to help you use symbolism to grow. He's been working in the craft for over a decade and served as WM, trustee, and sat in every appointed chair in a lodge - at least once :D

What is A Mason's Work?

In this show we discuss the practical applications of masonic symbolism and how the working tools can be used to better yourself, your family, your lodge, and your community. We help good freemasons become better men through honest self development. We talk quite a bit about mental health and men's issues related to emotional and intellectual growth as well.

One of the perhaps more exhausting and complex techniques that people will use as part of

the baiting and gatekeeping processes in the dark rhetoric sort of application is the

game of definitions.

And you'll hear this a lot when somebody is essentially trying to move an argument into

this sort of perpetual spiral of definition after definition after definition, that's not

to essentially move the conversation forward but to control the conversation completely.

So you'll hear people do this, they'll say things like, well, it depends on what you

mean by X or they'll say things like, can you define why?

And they'll use these kinds of deflections from the conversation to essentially get you

into this spiral of definitions, which they will then use to set up a straw man to bait

you into participating in an argument where words don't mean what they mean.

They mean some sort of mutually agreed upon definition for that intervening conversation

and then don't apply elsewhere.

You'll see this a lot as a technique in places where emotion is driving the conversation,

where an unformed thought process is driving the conversation.

So define what you mean by X often turns into like, you know, this ad hominem attack about

well, you're not a doctor, you don't know X or Y or Z or you're not a lawyer, so you

don't know A, B and C. You'll find that these definition requirements that you get to

in a conversation again are just used as a control tactic to stop progress against the original

line of conversation and move to this exhausting way of essentially delaying and avoiding moving

the conversation forward.

You'll find that the definitions you would agree to in a conversation like that immediately

get the goal post game going where it's like, well, you'll get the what aboutism.

So you'll have a definition that you'll kind of agree upon like what I mean by X is,

you know, these things and then their immediate response will be, well, what about, you

know, these other things?

Are they not X?

And then therefore not applicable to the conversation when in fact they may be core to the conversation.

As you go through and see these techniques sort of in application, understand that again,

the entire intent here is to A retain some level of power and control in the conversation.

It's an ego gratification thing.

It's a look at me.

I'm important.

I'm trying to debate the real issues here.

It is designed by intent to keep things as they are.

It is not designed ironically to persuade or move anyone in a conversation.

It is designed to keep things as they are.

It's designed to keep a confusion in place because the confusion in some way is beneficial

because then they can come in and save the day and try and disambiguate the confusion

or what have you.

It doesn't really matter in many cases the sort of whether or not the people that are applying

these techniques know that they're doing it or why they're doing it, but that they are

doing it puts us in a position as people that are trying to improve our skill in this

space.

It gives us opportunities to spot it, identify it and you know, kind of move through it and

get to a better space.

Then when you find yourself in a situation where you're playing the game of definitions,

you can say, well, if you want to read the textbook definition, let's use that.

That's fine.

But again, that immediately invites who's textbook and who's definition and while they're

biased and therefore, again, it's at hominem attack after definition attack after gatekeeping

what have you.

Again, when you need to move through there, through the perpetual definition place, you

might just identify that, for example, in the conversation, it seems like we're spending

a lot of time defining stuff without moving the actual conversation forward.

How does this apply?

How do these definitions apply to the argument at hand?

If we get to a concrete definition, will you then engage if the answer is no, then obviously

it doesn't really matter.

When you see this come up in conversation again, when you do it yourself or when other

people do it, you want to identify that that's pointing to a part of you that is effectively

trying to not move.

So as you go through it, give it proper self-reflection and see if you can spot it out in the

wild.