this post was submitted on 17 Dec 2025
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This isn't a kafka trap, though I understand the confusion - the fandom site you linked to appears to have a faulty understanding of what it is. To be a kafka trap requires accusation.
The yucky example from your fandom page about a parent criticizing progressive policies to support non-binary students is a great example of how this doesn't work: for it to be a kafka trap, the accusation that they (hate non-binary/are themselves non-binary) would have to be made in response to their concerns and then their denials be taken as an admission. Just raising them initially is not a kafka trap.
And that isn't what's happening in the above comment, either. People aren't being criticized for defending themselves, people are being criticized for
To be a kafka trap they would have to have been directly accused ("Hey I think you're a shitty person") and then because they're defending themselves ("You say you're not a shitty person?") have the conclusion drawn that they are a shitty person ("Only shitty people say they're not shitty people").
Criticizing them for feeling that they were the one being accused is not a kafka trap. Were I to say "I think people who are paranoid are bad" and some random passerby were to say "Well I'm for one not bad!" it would be pretty reasonable to draw conclusions about them considering themveslves to be paranoid.
This comic is not criticizing all men. This comic is criticizing men who engage in a depressingly quite common pattern of behavior. There's an extremely interesting discussion to be had about why that pattern of behavior is so common when so many men aren't the ones doing it (basically a loud minority can make an outsized impact on broad perceptions) but in their haste to attest to how offended they are, that never seems to be considered.
I don't doubt that most of the people attacking this comic aren't at all guilty of what the comic is criticizing. But that doesn't make the comic at all wrong, or the experiences of the many women in this comment section somehow made up.
This is a fallacy because it's a form of circular reasoning: a person who is not x would truthfully deny being x. Hence, the fallacy implies if a person is not x, then they are x. This is logically equivalent to assuming the person is x.
They are claiming the people who criticize the fallacies in the comic are 'outing themselves as assholes' as 'personally attacked'. They assume if someone criticizes the comic, then they must be the type of person the comic criticizes. There's no possible way the comic has an actual flaw to criticize.
This is a Kafka trap with the condition x as if they criticize the comic, then they are the type of person the comic criticizes. The trap supposes the condition is always true. It implies anyone who criticizes the comic must be the type of person the comic criticizes.
By ad hominem fallacy, they proceed to discredit any critic's claims that the comic could have an actual flaw to criticize.
In symbolic logic
Whether or not you accept the argument conforms to a Kafka trap, the fact remains they unjustifiably assume faulty premise A → B, conclude B, & proceed to dismiss critics' objections via apparent ad hominem.
The frequent defense of & blindness to fallacies is an interesting phenomenon that isn't that mysterious to explain: some people are stubborn, shitty reasoners.