Post by ag87 on Aug 17, 2016 17:24:11 GMT -8
I had never heard of Poe's Law until a few days ago. From wiki, "Poe's law is an Internet adage which states that, without a clear indicator of the author's intent, parodies of extreme views will be mistaken by some readers or viewers as sincere expressions of the parodied views."
I know our Beavermobile in the early days of message boards had multiple handles, some as ducks, to say outrageous and silly things mostly to make fun of all things green and yellow. So when I read about the law, my thoughts went to RT.
The following is a cut and paste from rationalwiki.org/wiki/Poe's_Law It got me laughing and I'm sure Beavermobile would have considered any of these reactions grand fun.
"Although not specifically about fundamentalism or extreme views, parody and satirical articles have frequently been mistaken for real things. This perhaps proves that even with the winking smiley Wink.gif things can be misinterpreted. The most notable cases of this are due to The Onion's production values rivaling those of CNN. The blog Literally Unbelievable documents numerous cases of The Onion stories being taken as true on Facebook, but sometimes it goes beyond social networking.
In 2012, Iran's Fars News Agency took The Onion's "Gallup Poll: Rural Whites Prefer Ahmadinejad to Obama" story and reported it almost as a word-for-word copy. The Onion highlighted this by editing their own version to include the line "For more on this story: Please visit our Iranian subsidiary organization, Fars."
Also in 2012, North Korea's Central News Agency found The Onion's article naming Kim Jong-Un the sexiest man alive. In China, a similar news source called the People's Daily circulated the article as truth. The Onion also updated the article, adding to the end, "For more coverage on The Onion's Sexiest Man Alive 2012, Kim Jong-Un, please visit our friends at the People's Daily in China, a proud Communist subsidiary of The Onion, Inc. Exemplary reportage, comrades."
Fox Nation, a subsidiary of Fox News[11], posted a story stating that Barack Obama had written a 75,000 word email ranting about America, sourced to The Onion. As a reference point for comparison, 75,000 words is about the length of a mid-sized novel such as The Catcher in the Rye or Lolita.
A 2001 The Onion article titled "Harry Potter Sparks Rise in Satanism Among Children" was copied into an internet circular (tellingly, with the more obviously parodist elements removed) and sent to numerous fundamentalist Christians.
The 2011 article "Planned Parenthood Opens $8 Billion Abortionplex" took in many people in the blogosphere, whose paranoia over the evils of abortion led them to believe it was genuine. Congressman John Fleming (R-LA) was suckered in by it.
In 2015, shortly after the mass FIFA arrests, the Onion ran an article entitled "FIFA Frantically Announces 2015 Summer World Cup In United States," mocking FIFA for attempting to placate the USA and not get all of their top officials arrested. Trinidadian former CONCACAF Vice President Jack Warner noted in a web video that the USA was only doing this as retribution for the decision to award the 2022 World Cup to Qatar, but cited this article as his source. He went on to compare himself to Nelson Mandela and Gandhi. Bleacher Report documents the entire deal."
I know our Beavermobile in the early days of message boards had multiple handles, some as ducks, to say outrageous and silly things mostly to make fun of all things green and yellow. So when I read about the law, my thoughts went to RT.
The following is a cut and paste from rationalwiki.org/wiki/Poe's_Law It got me laughing and I'm sure Beavermobile would have considered any of these reactions grand fun.
"Although not specifically about fundamentalism or extreme views, parody and satirical articles have frequently been mistaken for real things. This perhaps proves that even with the winking smiley Wink.gif things can be misinterpreted. The most notable cases of this are due to The Onion's production values rivaling those of CNN. The blog Literally Unbelievable documents numerous cases of The Onion stories being taken as true on Facebook, but sometimes it goes beyond social networking.
In 2012, Iran's Fars News Agency took The Onion's "Gallup Poll: Rural Whites Prefer Ahmadinejad to Obama" story and reported it almost as a word-for-word copy. The Onion highlighted this by editing their own version to include the line "For more on this story: Please visit our Iranian subsidiary organization, Fars."
Also in 2012, North Korea's Central News Agency found The Onion's article naming Kim Jong-Un the sexiest man alive. In China, a similar news source called the People's Daily circulated the article as truth. The Onion also updated the article, adding to the end, "For more coverage on The Onion's Sexiest Man Alive 2012, Kim Jong-Un, please visit our friends at the People's Daily in China, a proud Communist subsidiary of The Onion, Inc. Exemplary reportage, comrades."
Fox Nation, a subsidiary of Fox News[11], posted a story stating that Barack Obama had written a 75,000 word email ranting about America, sourced to The Onion. As a reference point for comparison, 75,000 words is about the length of a mid-sized novel such as The Catcher in the Rye or Lolita.
A 2001 The Onion article titled "Harry Potter Sparks Rise in Satanism Among Children" was copied into an internet circular (tellingly, with the more obviously parodist elements removed) and sent to numerous fundamentalist Christians.
The 2011 article "Planned Parenthood Opens $8 Billion Abortionplex" took in many people in the blogosphere, whose paranoia over the evils of abortion led them to believe it was genuine. Congressman John Fleming (R-LA) was suckered in by it.
In 2015, shortly after the mass FIFA arrests, the Onion ran an article entitled "FIFA Frantically Announces 2015 Summer World Cup In United States," mocking FIFA for attempting to placate the USA and not get all of their top officials arrested. Trinidadian former CONCACAF Vice President Jack Warner noted in a web video that the USA was only doing this as retribution for the decision to award the 2022 World Cup to Qatar, but cited this article as his source. He went on to compare himself to Nelson Mandela and Gandhi. Bleacher Report documents the entire deal."