Poe's Law

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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[1].

Poe's Law relates to fundamentalism, and the difficulty of identifying actual parodies of it. It suggests that, in general, it is hard to tell fake fundamentalism from the real thing, since they both sound equally ridiculous. The law also works in reverse: real fundamentalism can also be indistinguishable from parody fundamentalism. For example, some conservatives consider noted homophobe Fred Phelps to be so over-the-top that they think he's a "deep cover liberal" trying to discredit more mainstream homophobes.

Contents

[edit] History

Poe's Law was originally formulated by Nathan Poe.[2] The law emerged at the creationism versus evolution forum on the website Christianforums.com. Like most such places, it had seen a large amount of creationist parody postings. These parody posts were usually followed by at least one user starting a flame war thinking it was a real post. Nathan Poe summarized this pattern in his original formulation of the law:

Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is utterly impossible to parody a Creationist in such a way that someone won't mistake for the genuine article.

The law caught on and has since slowly leaked out as an internet meme. Over time it has been reformulated to include more than just creationist parody but rather any parody of fundamentalism, whether religious, secular or totally bonkers.

[edit] Expansion of the concept

Originally the law only made the claim that someone will mistake a parody of fundamentalism as the real thing. However, the usage of the law has come to mean three similar but different concepts:

  1. The original idea that at least one person will mistake parody for serious.
  2. That much parody will become indistinguishable from the real thing for anyone.
  3. That sincere expressions of fundamentalism will seem like parody to less crazy people.

The most likely reason for this expansion is the tendency for people to call Poe's Law (see below under usage) on any fundamentalist rant even before someone has responded negatively. After a while when many sincere posts were called "Poe's Law" or when every parody got labeled "Poe's law" the concept naturally expanded. The actual canonical definition though has not changed to encompass the expanded usage and a true Poe's Law purist may object to its usage outside the original concept.

[edit] Formalizations of Poe's Law

Visual representation of one possible arrangement of state space for Poe's Law
Visual representation of one possible arrangement of state space for Poe's Law

Several attempts have been made at RationalWiki to formalize the various concepts that Poe's Law has been used for and to explore its implications. Every formalization quickly highlights the need to define several which parameters alter when the observer or potential parody material changes. These parameters are:

  1. The basic likelihood for parody within the topic being written about and the location of its publication. Some topics are more likely to attract parodist, and some publication routes are more prone to parody than others.
  2. How extremist is the material being analyzed along the normal continuum of material published on that topic.
  3. The inherent bias of the observer, some people are more apt to see parody or less likely to believe something can be real than others.

One approach to formalization has been to use a Cartesian graph to visually represent the state space of when something is perceived as parody or fundamentalism. The y-axis represents the bias of the observer, while the x-axis represents the intentions of the poster. One such example is illustrated to the right. In this case it is assumed that a more rational viewer is more likely to see parody in fundamentalist positions than a fundamentalist will. The actual area taken up by observed parody or fundamentalism will change depending on the background of the subject and the location of publication.

[edit] Reception and usage

The use of the term is most common in the skeptical and science based communities on Web 2.0. Many blogs, forums and wikis will often refer to the law when dealing with cranks of any stripe. The most common usage is after a fundamentalist rant has been posted in a topic people will rush to be the first to respond with "I call Poe's Law." Much bragging rights can be earned to call it first, while subsequent calls are just posers. Another common use is when linking to highly questionable rants by prefacing it with "Poe's Law strikes again" or just simply "Poe's Law."

Outside of Web 2.0 the law is far less known and probably rarely utilized. Wikipedia has deleted the article on Poe's Law twice so far [3] but now includes it on it's list of "eponymous laws." [4].

[edit] Test yourself!

Three of the eight following sites are parodies, while the others are serious attempts at religious expression. Good luck choosing which are which!

[edit] Answers

ROT-13 encrypted answer: Jrfgobeb, Encgher Ernql, gur sbhe fgrc cebbs, gur Ynfg Trarengvba genpg, naq Gvzr Phor ner frevbhf, gubhtu gur ynggre vf fb ovmneer gung bar jbhyq guvax vg vf n cnebql bs fbzr vaqvfpreavoyr oryvrs. Gur erfg ner cnebqvrf.[5]

[edit] Real-life examples

  • One Conservapedia editor, for some degree of time, explained transitional forms as genetic hybrids created by Noah's super technologically advanced peers.
  • Conservapedia was, and still is, rife with such examples. For example this entry which remained for some time, and explained how exploding volcanoes in the Mt Ararat region were responsible for distributing animals after the flood.
  • Blogs 4 Brownback [6] seemed to really be an ultra-conservative Christian website - it even took us in.
  • Meanwhile, Answers in Genesis is, to the best of anyone's knowledge, serious business.
  • Now that you've had some practice, here's another test - is this a parody or not? (Warning: sometimes NSFW)

[edit] Known parodies

We out them here!

[edit] Still unknown

  • We are still puzzling over whether this site is a a parody or not.

[edit] See also

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ↑ "Poe's Law" in the Urban Dictionary
  2. ↑ Nathan Poe's original post here.
  3. ↑ 2nd AFD discussion for Poe's Law
  4. ↑ Wikipedia's list of eponymous laws
  5. ↑ Copy and paste to here to decipher, if you can't read ROT-13 easily.
  6. ↑ Blogs for Brownback
Articles in RationalWiki related to Laws of teh Internetz
Cohen's Law - Danth's Law - Demeyer's Law - Godwin's Law - Grey's Law - Poe's Law - Pommer's Law - Schlafly's Law - Scopie's Law - Zeigler's Law



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