Nutpicking
Etymology
A blend of “nut” (as in fringe crank) and “cherry-picking,” generally attributed to the political blogger Kevin Drum around 2006. It described the ease of scrolling any large forum, finding one deranged reply, and presenting it as representative. The web made the tactic trivial because every movement has an anonymous lunatic somewhere.
noun · /NUT-pik-ing/
Discrediting a large group by spotlighting its most extreme or unhinged members.
What it names
A rhetorical cheat: judging a whole community by its worst comment section.
Example
Quoting one anonymous death threat to indict millions of ordinary fans is just nutpicking.
Related idea
Nutpicking is the mirror image of the straw man: rather than inventing a weak opponent, it finds a real but unrepresentative one and pretends it speaks for all.
See also