system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
How did the play by Aristophanes "The Clouds" create negative social stigma towards Socrates?
gpt
Before Socrates there were basically two main "teams" involved in debate in Athens. One was rooted in traditional values, the teachings of the poets and "common sense"; Aristophanes belonged to this team, as did his intended public. 

The other one was that of the sophists. Sophist thinkers covered actually a wide range of different positions, but as they questioned the basis of truth, knowledge and ethics - often with a provocative attitude - they ended up clashing with the traditional values team. Sophists came to be seen as people who either wasted their time in convoluted and groundless type of knowledge, or used language tricks to confuse others and make them believe any sort of lie, in order to gain advantage for themselves. The fact that they usually gave lessons to young people eager to learn these "tricks" in order to gain power in the city didn't help.

Socrates brought in the debate something that was completely new and different from both points of view, but for traditionally minded, common-sense people it was very difficult to see the difference. The fact is, that Socrates actually borrowed many things from the sophists, like the provocative attitude and the habit of pushing language to its extreme limits.

In the Clouds a seemingly very superficial knowledge of Socrates' ways of doing philosophy is distorted to reinforce this confusion and group it together with the form of sophism that Aristophane's public would have find at the same time ridiculous and frightening (the play ends with the main character that, having learned how to make a false argument sound true, can allow himself not to pay debts and even to beat his father without consequences - that is, to escape from every kind of value that should be sacred)