Fallacy
Strawman
Argue against a distorted version of the claim instead of the real one.
Argue against a distorted version of the claim instead of the real one.
Example
"We should add a bike lane on Elm Street." "So you want to ban cars from the city entirely? That would destroy every local business."
A strawman swaps the real claim for a weaker, more extreme version that’s easier to knock down. The response sounds confident and engaged, but it never touches what was actually proposed.
Spot it by checking whether the reply describes a position anyone in the conversation actually holds. If the “so you’re saying” summary is more extreme than the original sentence, it’s a strawman.
The fix is simple: ask the person to point to exactly where the extreme version was said. Usually, it wasn’t.