Poe's law
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Poe's law, named after its author Nathan Poe, is an Internet adage reflecting the fact that without a clear indication of the author's intent, it is difficult or impossible to tell the difference between sincere extremism and the satirical parody of extremism.[1][2]
The law and its meaning
Poe's law states:
“Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of fundamentalism that someone won't mistake for the real thing.”[3]
The core of Poe's law is that a parody of something is by nature extreme. That makes it impossible to differentiate from sincere extremism.[2]
A corollary of Poe's law is the reverse phenomenon: legitimate fundamentalist beliefs being mistaken for a parody of that belief.[3]
A further corollary, the Poe Paradox, results from suspicion of the first corollary. The paradox is that any new person or idea sufficiently extreme to be accepted by the extremist group risks being rejected as a parody or parodist.
History
The statement called Poe's law was formulated in 2005 by Nathan Poe on the website christianforums.com in a debate about creationism. The original sentence read “Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is uttrerly [sic] impossible to parody a Creationist in such a way that someone won’t mistake [it] for the genuine article.”[4]
References
- ^ Aikin, Scott F., Poe's Law, Group Polarization, and the Epistemology of Online Religious Discourse (January, 23 2009). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1332169
- ^ a b "Poe's Law". tvtropes.org. Retrieved January 8, 2010.
- ^ a b Chivers, Tom (23 Oct 2009). "Internet rules and laws: the top 10, from Godwin to Poe". The Telegraph.
- ^ "Big contradictions in the evolution theory". 11 Aug 2005.