4 ms·

Facebook is strange. People on that site don't understand satire.

• dcposch 11y ago
  > People on that site don't understand satire. i dont think you can generalize like that about an app that has more than a billion users
  • clwk 11y ago
    Why not? It's like saying, "People on merry-go-rounds have a hard time balancing."
    • walterbell 11y ago
      Or "HN has better-than-average comments". They are consequences of design and policy.
      • harry8 11y ago
        teehee
• bostik 11y ago
  In that case one could say that FB offers a good cross-cut of [Western] human population. Satire is hard. It's hard to do right, and ironically, the better it's done, the harder it is to spot. For a long time IMDB did not have a proper satire category. Obvious satirical pieces got lumped together with "dark comedy" and "parody". These days we are blessed with sub-categories, but originally, and certainly up until mid-noughties the concept was unknown. So either IMDB didn't see a user-driven need to include the category, or they didn't trust their userbase to be able to understand the difference. Perhaps the biggest "problem" with satire is that it's an intellectually demanding form of expression, both for the creator and her audience. In a world where eliminating your target audience's need to think is considered a virtue, all less-than-bloody-obvious communication efforts will fall victim to Wiio's Laws.[0] The most basic form of the laws can be distilled to: "all communication fails, except by accident". When the stated form of communication relies on subtlety and audience interpretation, it is guaranteed that a sizable segment will misunderstand both the message, and the point. Makes one want crawl to a warm corner, curl up in a ball and cry. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiio's_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiio's_laws