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I will repeat myself, but IMHO intent matters. Satire is fine if the goal is to expose a problem in a playful way or to take a certain argument to an extreme to
by js8 8y ago
I will repeat myself, but IMHO intent matters. Satire is fine if the goal is to expose a problem in a playful way or to take a certain argument to an extreme to expose hypocrisy.
Where it doesn't work is to show how people are stupid, while feeding them wrong (but plausible from their POV) information. Yes, people are sometimes stupid, but if you want to showcase that, I think there is plenty of material to work with, you don't have to make things up.
It's like when police makes up a crime by entraping somebody, who wouldn't do the crime otherwise. It is not helping society in any positive way.
- walrus01 8y agohttps://www.theonion.com/fbi-uncovers-al-qaeda-plot-to-just-sit-back-and-enjoy-c-1819576375 https://www.theonion.com/fbi-uncovers-al-qaeda-plot-to-just-...
- js8 8y agoExactly, this is a good example of what I am saying in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18576417 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18576417 The Onion was wrong to publish that article. Now the poor people who are not able to recognize satire will be left with an impression that America's crumbling infrastructure is a bigger threat to American way of life than Al-Qaeda. This threatens the funding for important counter-terrorism activities of the FBI and Department of Homeland Security.