Er, no? Whataboutism is an attempt to claim hypocrisy by drawing in something else with the same flaw. This is pointing out a way for this exact proposal to fail.
Okay, I thought it was something along the lines of argumenting against a proposal that is better but not perfect because "what about this edge case". Had a colleague who was a master at this craft and managed to get many good ideas shot down this way.
It's not even tangentially related to what the word means...
No, it's not.
Er, no? Whataboutism is an attempt to claim hypocrisy by drawing in something else with the same flaw. This is pointing out a way for this exact proposal to fail.
Okay, I thought it was something along the lines of argumenting against a proposal that is better but not perfect because "what about this edge case". Had a colleague who was a master at this craft and managed to get many good ideas shot down this way.
Well, edge cases can be bad. If you didn't have an answer for those edge case problems then why do you think the ideas were good?
Whataboutism is like this:
"Russia invading Ukraine is bad"
"What about the US? They invaded Iraq!"
The latter is used to justify the former, when it shouldn't.
Whataboutism is not pointing out flaws in a proposal, no. But I guess the word is so overly used these days that the definition becomes blurry.