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=                             Poe's law                              =
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                             Introduction
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Poe's law is an adage of Internet culture stating that, without a
clear indicator of the author's intent, it is impossible to create a
parody of extreme views so obviously exaggerated that it cannot be
mistaken by some readers for a sincere expression of the views being
parodied. The original statement, by Nathan Poe, read:


                                Origin
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Poe's law is based on a comment written by Nathan Poe in 2005 on
christianforums.com, an Internet forum on Christianity. The post was
made during a debate on creationism, where a previous poster had
remarked to another user: "Good thing you included the winky.
Otherwise people might think you are serious". Poe then replied,
"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 original
statement of Poe's law referred specifically to creationism, but it
has since been generalized to apply to any kind of fundamentalism or
extremism.

In part, Poe was simply reiterating common advice about the need to
clearly mark online sarcasm or parody (e.g. with a smiling or winking
emoticon) to avoid confusion. As early as 1983, Jerry Schwarz, in a
post on Usenet, wrote:


In 2017, 'Wired' published an article calling it "2017's Most
Important Internet Phenomenon" and noting: "Poe's Law applies to more
and more internet interactions." The article gave examples of cases
involving 4chan and the Trump administration where there were
deliberate ambiguities over whether something was serious or intended
as a parody, where people were using Poe's Law as "a refuge" to
camouflage beliefs that would otherwise be considered unacceptable.


                               See also
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* Godwin's law
* List of eponymous laws


                            External links
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*
[https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/05/how-to-tell-a-joke-on-the-
internet/309293/
How to Tell a Joke on the Internet], 'The Atlantic'


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License URL: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
Original Article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law


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