But You Said So Fallacy

A variation of the strawman fallacy where the strawman is constructed based on terms the person used to describe themselves or their position. "But you said you were X, so you must believe Y" becomes a way of distorting positions by taking self-descriptions out of context or pushing them to extremes. The fallacy lies in using someone's own words against them in ways that misrepresent their actual position—turning self-description into caricature, identity into ideology.

"I said I'm patriotic. Response: 'So you support everything the government does? But You Said So Fallacy—taking my self-description and pushing it to absurd extremes. Patriotic doesn't mean unquestioning; it means loving my country, which includes critiquing it. Using my words against me in ways I never intended is strawman by quotation."

But You Said So Fallacy by Dumu The Void March 3, 2026