Shift

Someone who sleeps or gains unconsciousness purposely to mentally transfer to an alternate reality.

"Did you shift last night?"
"Yes! I saw my comfort character from insert fandom here!"

by toastrauma February 15, 2022

Afk shift

(Excluding lunch, washroom breaks or sleep) the amount of time you spend as an afk chatter

If you say something like gtg and brb to your mates in a chat room, and you go off to help your parents, this may be the beginning of your longish afk shift.

by Sexydimma March 6, 2022

Shifting the Burden

The tactic of moving the burden of proof from the one making a claim to the one questioning it. Shifting the burden is what happens when someone says "prove me wrong" instead of supporting their own position. It's the logic of "you can't prove God doesn't exist, so he does," of "you can't prove vaccines are safe, so they're dangerous." Shifting the burden inverts the normal rules of argument, putting the challenger in the impossible position of proving a negative. The cure is recognizing that the burden of proof lies with the positive claim, not with its critics. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, not extraordinary skepticism.

Shifting the Burden Example: "He claimed the election was stolen. When asked for evidence, he shifted the burden: 'Prove it wasn't.' She couldn't prove a negative; that's not how proof works. But shifting the burden had worked: now she was on the defensive, trying to disprove his unsupported claim. The argument was upside down, and he liked it that way."

by Abzugal Nammugal Enkigal February 17, 2026