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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law >Poe's law is an Internet adage that states that, without a clear indicator of
by nommm-nommm 10y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law
>Poe's law is an Internet adage that states that, without a clear indicator of the author's intent, it is impossible to create a parody of extreme views so obviously exaggerated that it cannot be mistaken by some readers or viewers as a sincere expression of the parodied views
Similar, there was also the Bert is Evil website from 1997, which attempted to "prove" the Seasame Street character Bert was evil. It contained a photo of Bert photoshopped with Osama Bin Laden which actually appeared on a sign at a pro-Bin Laden rally in Bangladesh. The sign holder simply printed out a picture they found on the web, unaware of who the character was or that the photo was a parody.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bert_is_Evil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bert_is_Evil
>After this photo was released on the news wires, the owners of Sesame Street, Sesame Workshop, raised the possibility of pursuing legal action against Ignacio. In response, he took down the "Bert is Evil" section of his website,[10]:736 also stating that he did not want to undermine the character in the eyes of children who watched Sesame Street. "I am doing this because I feel this has gotten too close to reality", he said.[11] Since the original Bert/Osama picture had been posted to Dennis Pozniak's mirror, he too was bombarded by the international media seeking interviews. As a result of all the attention Pozniak also closed his mirror.[12]
- Wonderdonkey 10y agoI remember a bunch of "X is evil" sites sprouted up at some point. There was even a site that aggregated them. I did mine when my wife was pregnant with our first daughter back in '96. I had quit smoking cigarettes, and this was one of my outlets. It would be cool if someone could produce an accurate timeline of all the AOL, Geocities, etc. sites. Too bad we only have incomplete snapshots! I wouldn't even now how to start something like that.
- beaconstudios 10y agoThat would be amazing, I had an old geocities site that unfortunately hasn't been archived by any of the new geocities archive sites.
- coldpie 10y agoI had one that, unfortunately, has.
- beaconstudios 10y agomy site was really atrocious and quite embarrassing (it was a fan-page for the kind of cheesy stuff 13-year-olds love like The Matrix and stickpage.com animations), but sometimes I think it would be cool to look back at where I started.
- js2 10y agoBack in the late nineties, I and a few coworkers called Gene Ray, the Time Cube guy. We were sure his site was parody. After a few minutes conversation, we concluded he was sincere. Therein lies the danger of extreme parody -- there are enough oddballs out there that you can't immediately discount something as parody.
- nommm-nommm 10y agoI want to believe the Flat Earth Society is parody... but I know a Flat Earther and he's totality serious. :-/
- dpc59 10y agoAsk him about mountains if you want to see olympic levels of mental gymnastics.
- vocatus_gate 10y agoI wintered over in Antarctica last year, and regularly had people DM'ing me on Instagram (probably searched for the #antarctica hashtag) and asking if it was actually real, if it was really an ice wall, if there were "secret military blackout zones" etc. It was pretty funny. I always took time out to answer them, but often I'd have to block them once it became apparent they were never going to be convinced.
- ghostly_s 10y ago>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law Is this the same Poe's law referenced in a pull-quote, above the fold, in the linked article?
- nommm-nommm 10y agoActually, now that I look at it more,yes. I usually ignore quoted text like that in articles because they are almost always quotes from the article itself that make no sense out of context. So I didn't realize Poe's law was referenced.
- RainaRelanah 10y agoThis is caused by media sites/blogs abusing block quote typesetting for pull quotes. If the quote is in the text of your article elsewhere, it should be placed off to the side as a pull quote, outside of the natural reading order. This article's author properly used block quote positioning, but our minds have been trained to skip it as we assume it is a pull quote.