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The author of this article says it was unsubtle, obvious satire but I would say that the post they referenced was solidly in Poe’s law territory. Is it really s

by jolux 5y ago

The author of this article says it was unsubtle, obvious satire but I would say that the post they referenced was solidly in Poe’s law territory. Is it really so hard to imagine someone genuinely writing that? Perhaps they’ve never met a misogynist. Wishing for it to be true after it had been shown to be false is one thing (and clearly dumb), but I think the existence of such a subreddit is a perfectly reasonable thing to be outraged over in the first place. Texas’s SB8 will cause real harm, and making fun of people who are deeply concerned for women’s safety because of it seems borderline sociopathic to me.

yanderekko 5y ago
The problem with Poe's Law is that the person invoking it is often just revealing their own biases. It's not impossible to imagine any number of people writing any number of things, it's a failure to calibrate your expectations about the likelihood of parody properly that's the issue. Journalists in particular should feel responsible to investigate likely satire before signal-boosting it. If they're actually disincentivized from doing so, that indicates that something is pretty rotten about our media culture.. >Texas’s SB8 will cause real harm, and making fun of people who are deeply concerned for women’s safety because of it seems borderline sociopathic to me. If your deep concern causes you to detach from reality, then being made fun of will hopefully provide a merciful way for you to regain your grip. Look at the recent "witches vs. Taliban" fiasco - perhaps gentle mockery will help people focus their activist impulses towards more-productive ends?
- jolux 5y ago
  But this cuts both ways — you are exposing your own biases in believing it’s obvious satire. I hold the prior that most people writing on the internet are not doing it merely to get a rise out of liberals. I have also known men who became violent and angry when a women they had sex with decided to get an abortion. What’s different about this Reddit post? What’s supposed to indicate to me that it’s obviously in jest? Genuinely asking.
  - grapist420 5y ago
    ok but I wrote some of it and it was explicitly intended to be satire for the purpose of ridiculing people dumb enough to believe it
    - jolux 5y ago
      I understand it was intended as satire. What I don’t understand is why anyone would be surprised that you fooled people. People are notoriously easy to fool! Smart people, dumb people, brilliant scientists. Happens all the time. I would go so far as to say that being fooled, and being a gigantic dumbass, is the state of nature of human beings. It didn’t end up in any news source I would classify as having a good reputation.
      - grapist420 5y ago
        Subs like transpets illustrate more how ridiculous it is people are fooled. Thousands of upspergs on posts about dilating dogs or castrating cats. People are absurdly gullible and it’s really just terrible.
        jolux 5y ago
        > People are absurdly gullible and it’s really just terrible. Have you considered how far we would have gotten as a species if we had a pervasive assumption of bad faith in our interactions with other people? Complex societies depend on assuming good faith. People who assume others are always acting in bad faith are often traumatized or suffering from other forms of mental illness. I don’t find it “ridiculous” that people believe stupid things. I believe stupid things, and I’m sure you do as well. It’s certainly bad, but I’m not quite sure how your contributions improve the situation. Mostly they seem calibrated to reduce social trust and push people towards assuming bad faith. What if you wrote about how to identify satire instead?
        seabird 5y ago
        There _is_ a pervasive assumption of bad faith. People almost always consider the possibility of bad faith when they don't know the other party, at all levels of society since the beginning of recorded history. A bad actor can have a massive (sometimes irreversible) negative impact; it's an important behavior that we should encourage.
nerdsbtfo 5y ago
Dude, if you're so far down your partisan internet mouthbreather rabbit hole that you start to defend other people for biting on embarrassingly obvious bait, you might want to take a break. Go camping or join a bowling league or something. Touch grass.
grapist420 5y ago
https://camas.github.io/reddit-search/#{"subreddit":"TXbountyhunters","searchFor":1,"resultSize":2200} https://camas.github.io/reddit-search/#{"subreddit":"TXbount... See the posts there if you want. A few were removed by the mods for being too obvious, but in general it was not subtle. u/cry_for_me_fatty and u/cats_like_my_cum, etc. the comments or post histories would make clear to anyone of even mild discernment that it’s not real.
grapist420 5y ago
and > Texas’s SB8 will cause real harm, and making fun of people who are deeply concerned for women’s safety because of it seems borderline sociopathic to me. Jokes aren’t sociopathic? We make fun of anyone, and where else can you demonstrate that people are too willing to fall for stories they’re mad at but with topics they are super invested in in an over the top way?
cortesoft 5y ago
So as long as you can imagine someone holding the view you are reading, it is no longer important to critically evaluate its veracity? In isolation, this view might be rational. However, in aggregate, this mindset can cause a cycle of increasing extremism. A good portion of those misogynists you speak of came to their views because they have read countless fake left-wing content that they thought was real, and in response became more entrenched in their opposing views. The cycle goes like this - a fairly sane, conservative person sees someone on a conservative subreddit post a link to the 'transparents' subreddit, and sees posts they believe are real that talk about parents giving their kids hormones against their will. A natural response is to think "Woh, those trans rights people are crazy, maybe we should push back against trans rights"... and they become a little bit more extreme in their beliefs. Multiply this by a thousand, and you have a crazy extremist on your hands. The same thing happens on the other side, and you get more and more extremists on the left. Now the cycle becomes even more self-sustaining, because now you have legitimate crazy extremists adding fuel to the fire by making real posts that sound a lot like the satire posts. So now, the satire has to be even MORE extreme to be humorous, and the cycle deepens. This is a really hard problem to combat. I agree with you that this Texas law is absolutely insane and dangerous. However, I don't think the solution is to stop being critical of evidence that confirms what we already believe to be true, just because we are so sure of what we believe.
- jolux 5y ago
  > So as long as you can imagine someone holding the view you are reading, it is no longer important to critically evaluate its veracity? No, I don’t believe that.
mmarq 5y ago
I think the real problem is that “some guy wrote some crazy shit on a forum and somebody liked it” became newsworthy. The fact that this journalist didn't even check the story on Google, is certainly a problem but no the main one.

by jolux 5y ago

yanderekko 5y ago

The problem with Poe's Law is that the person invoking it is often just revealing their own biases. It's not impossible to imagine any number of people writing any number of things, it's a failure to calibrate your expectations about the likelihood of parody properly that's the issue. Journalists in particular should feel responsible to investigate likely satire before signal-boosting it. If they're actually disincentivized from doing so, that indicates that something is pretty rotten about our media culture.. >Texas’s SB8 will cause real harm, and making fun of people who are deeply concerned for women’s safety because of it seems borderline sociopathic to me. If your deep concern causes you to detach from reality, then being made fun of will hopefully provide a merciful way for you to regain your grip. Look at the recent "witches vs. Taliban" fiasco - perhaps gentle mockery will help people focus their activist impulses towards more-productive ends?

jolux 5y ago
But this cuts both ways — you are exposing your own biases in believing it’s obvious satire. I hold the prior that most people writing on the internet are not doing it merely to get a rise out of liberals. I have also known men who became violent and angry when a women they had sex with decided to get an abortion. What’s different about this Reddit post? What’s supposed to indicate to me that it’s obviously in jest? Genuinely asking.
- grapist420 5y ago
  ok but I wrote some of it and it was explicitly intended to be satire for the purpose of ridiculing people dumb enough to believe it
  - jolux 5y ago
    I understand it was intended as satire. What I don’t understand is why anyone would be surprised that you fooled people. People are notoriously easy to fool! Smart people, dumb people, brilliant scientists. Happens all the time. I would go so far as to say that being fooled, and being a gigantic dumbass, is the state of nature of human beings. It didn’t end up in any news source I would classify as having a good reputation.
    - grapist420 5y ago
      Subs like transpets illustrate more how ridiculous it is people are fooled. Thousands of upspergs on posts about dilating dogs or castrating cats. People are absurdly gullible and it’s really just terrible.
      - jolux 5y ago
        > People are absurdly gullible and it’s really just terrible. Have you considered how far we would have gotten as a species if we had a pervasive assumption of bad faith in our interactions with other people? Complex societies depend on assuming good faith. People who assume others are always acting in bad faith are often traumatized or suffering from other forms of mental illness. I don’t find it “ridiculous” that people believe stupid things. I believe stupid things, and I’m sure you do as well. It’s certainly bad, but I’m not quite sure how your contributions improve the situation. Mostly they seem calibrated to reduce social trust and push people towards assuming bad faith. What if you wrote about how to identify satire instead?
        seabird 5y ago
        There _is_ a pervasive assumption of bad faith. People almost always consider the possibility of bad faith when they don't know the other party, at all levels of society since the beginning of recorded history. A bad actor can have a massive (sometimes irreversible) negative impact; it's an important behavior that we should encourage.

nerdsbtfo 5y ago

Dude, if you're so far down your partisan internet mouthbreather rabbit hole that you start to defend other people for biting on embarrassingly obvious bait, you might want to take a break. Go camping or join a bowling league or something. Touch grass.

grapist420 5y ago

https://camas.github.io/reddit-search/#{"subreddit":"TXbountyhunters","searchFor":1,"resultSize":2200} https://camas.github.io/reddit-search/#{"subreddit":"TXbount... See the posts there if you want. A few were removed by the mods for being too obvious, but in general it was not subtle. u/cry_for_me_fatty and u/cats_like_my_cum, etc. the comments or post histories would make clear to anyone of even mild discernment that it’s not real.

grapist420 5y ago

and > Texas’s SB8 will cause real harm, and making fun of people who are deeply concerned for women’s safety because of it seems borderline sociopathic to me. Jokes aren’t sociopathic? We make fun of anyone, and where else can you demonstrate that people are too willing to fall for stories they’re mad at but with topics they are super invested in in an over the top way?

cortesoft 5y ago

So as long as you can imagine someone holding the view you are reading, it is no longer important to critically evaluate its veracity? In isolation, this view might be rational. However, in aggregate, this mindset can cause a cycle of increasing extremism. A good portion of those misogynists you speak of came to their views because they have read countless fake left-wing content that they thought was real, and in response became more entrenched in their opposing views. The cycle goes like this - a fairly sane, conservative person sees someone on a conservative subreddit post a link to the 'transparents' subreddit, and sees posts they believe are real that talk about parents giving their kids hormones against their will. A natural response is to think "Woh, those trans rights people are crazy, maybe we should push back against trans rights"... and they become a little bit more extreme in their beliefs. Multiply this by a thousand, and you have a crazy extremist on your hands. The same thing happens on the other side, and you get more and more extremists on the left. Now the cycle becomes even more self-sustaining, because now you have legitimate crazy extremists adding fuel to the fire by making real posts that sound a lot like the satire posts. So now, the satire has to be even MORE extreme to be humorous, and the cycle deepens. This is a really hard problem to combat. I agree with you that this Texas law is absolutely insane and dangerous. However, I don't think the solution is to stop being critical of evidence that confirms what we already believe to be true, just because we are so sure of what we believe.

jolux 5y ago
> So as long as you can imagine someone holding the view you are reading, it is no longer important to critically evaluate its veracity? No, I don’t believe that.

mmarq 5y ago

I think the real problem is that “some guy wrote some crazy shit on a forum and somebody liked it” became newsworthy. The fact that this journalist didn't even check the story on Google, is certainly a problem but no the main one.