[FRIAM] satire collapse

[glen]

I've struggled to name this for awhile. I like Poe's Law <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law>. And I'm fond of Franzén's argument <https://web.archive.org/web/20060430164022/http://www.sm.luth.se/~torkel/eget/net.html>. cf "Many posters have a weakness for what they take to be hard-hitting irony or sarcasm. In response to such, never dispute or protest, but simply pretend to take their statement at face value. ... The heavier the intended irony or sarcasm, the more anxious its author will be to have it understood that he is being ironic or sarcastic, and after some grumbling about people's limited appreciation of irony or sarcasm, he will resume the argument, his intended knock-out blow having been rendered ineffective."

But I [cough] *resonate¹ with* this sentence from https://comedyphilosopher.com/post-irony-loop-mechanics-and-the-collapse-of-modern-satire/:

"We’re living in an era where the nuance of a punchline is being flattened by literalism and moral panic, leaving us with nothing but a hollow, humorless digital void."

My first candidate has been "degenerate satire". But I think "satire collapse" might be better. Poe's Law is, then, a member of the larger class, a type of satire collapse. Bad Faith enters, yet again. When someone like Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones, or Stephen Colbert adopts a persona for long enough, they run the risk of inhabiting it. Colbert is competent. So his risk was minimal. But Jones seems to have gotten totally lost. I'm not sure about Carlson.

Are we "genuinely terrified of being misunderstood, while the platforms we use reward the most literal, bad-faith interpretations of every joke, leading many to wonder if we are witnessing the permanent end of subtext"? Torkel, long dead now², exploited this fear amongst the Usenet snark, weaponized misunderstanding. My personal answer is obviously No, because nobody ever understands anyone anyway. So Do your worst! I say. Misunderstand me to your heart's content. >8^D "I am not afraid!"³


[1] https://satire.info/the-ministry-of-truthiness-satirical-journalism-and-the-death-of-objectivity/ cf "truthiness - the quality of preferring concepts one wishes to be true over those supported by facts".

[2] https://fomarchive.ugent.be/2006-April/010463.html, also https://resources.illc.uva.nl/LogicList/newsitem.php?id=7645

[3] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Ox3WxH103pA

On 3/25/26 2:06 PM, glen wrote:
> Like the best satire, it can be difficult to tell whether or not it *is* satire.
> 
> On 3/25/26 12:24 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
>> And by the way, do you know what malus means in Latin: Apple. Are these folks planning to conquer the earth?  Nick

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