Whoever shared that story knew the headline described something impossible. He assumed, however, that the writers<\/em>\u00a0at National Report<\/a>\u00a0thought it was true and accurate reportage. You can see the same assumption in the comments below the article itself. The story gulled enough people that the I Fucking Love Science<\/a>\u00a0website found it necessary to publish this\u00a0response<\/a>.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re reading this, you\u2019ve probably heard of Poe\u2019s Law, but just in case, it\u2019s an Internet truism coined in 2005 by Nathan Poe on Christian Forums<\/a>, and it originally had this formulation:<\/span><\/p>\n 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<\/em>\u00a0won’t mistake for the genuine article.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Poe\u2019s observation, in context and as since generalized, was that satire and parody are very difficult to perform in this day and age, because any sentiment or idea you try to present as being absurdly beyond what anyone could believe will nonetheless be sincerely believed by someone. Parody is thus beside the point.<\/p>\n The ur-text of Internet parody is certainly The Onion<\/a>. I\u2019ve previously mentioned<\/a>\u00a0the website Literally Unbelievable<\/a>, which has its fun by posting screencaps of people who read headlines from The Onion<\/a>\u00a0and think they\u2019re real. The writers of The Onion<\/a>\u00a0are masters of their craft; their stories (or really, just the headlines; after the headline, an Onion<\/em>\u00a0story has already done its job) are written with such a perfect blend of deadpan and farce that one really does have to be either monumentally obtuse or possess a tone-deaf sense of humor to miss the point.<\/p>\n This post is about The Onion<\/a>\u2019s intellectual offspring: satire and\/or parody websites have proliferated like mad in the past few years. Most of them aren\u2019t as good as The Onion<\/a>\u00a0at threading the needle between satire and credibility. Some of them are funny, but the problem with many of them is in the other direction: their stories aren\u2019t funny at all, and seem so real that there\u2019s no good reason to doubt them. Take, for example, this story from The Daily Currant<\/a>, which bills itself as \u201cThe Global Satirical Newspaper of Record:\u201d<\/p>\n Mitch McConnell Brings Rifle to \u2018Larry the Cable Guy\u2019 Show<\/a><\/p>\n See what I mean? It\u2019s beyond the realm of the reasonable, but right at the edge of the believable. It names real politicians and links to stories at real news organs. I often see The Daily Currant<\/a>\u00a0stories shared credulously on Facebook. Is that the goal? To what end? What does it benefit such sites when people believe their fake stories? Is that the only effective way to boost their hit counts? Or do people love feeling superior so much that they love sharing stories that appear to reveal the intellectual, moral, or political failings of others?<\/p>\n It\u2019s not only \u201cnews\u201d sites that do this. This sign has been shared all over social media for months or years by now:<\/p>\n Of course, it\u2019s fake. It\u2019s a cartoon of intolerance. People must be reassured, somehow, to believe there are fundamentalists so intolerant and deranged that they\u2019d condemn the likes of surfers and vegetarians to damnation. There is at least one church sign generator<\/a>\u00a0on the Web that lets people name a church, compose a message, and then \u2018shop them onto an existing (but blank) photo of a church sign. It looks just like the real thing, and accordingly, people believe it.<\/p>\n But if it\u2019s not true, it\u2019s not funny; the humor (and horror) comes from understanding that people really are ignorant enough to really believe these things. The church signs wouldn\u2019t get shared the way they do if they weren\u2019t believed.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve begun compiling a database of all these sites. For good measure, I\u2019ll also throw in The Colbert Report<\/em>, NPR\u2019s annual April Fools\u2019 Day story, and any other television shows or YouTube channels I learn about that similarly skirt the line. If they\u2019re fake but can be or have been easily mistaken for truth, I\u2019ll add them. The database will be a little like Snopes.com<\/a>; the idea is that if you come across a questionable story, one whose veracity you doubt, you can go to my list and see if I\u2019ve written it up yet. And if I haven\u2019t, you can message me and get me to add it (or determine that it\u2019s not fake after all).<\/p>\n Here\u2019s a sampling of ones I\u2019ve found so far, organized by category. As I flesh out this directory, I\u2019ll include details such as how long the site has been around, its mission statement (if any), and if it\u2019s a parody of any one real news organ in particular, as Colbert is a parody of Bill O\u2019Reilly.<\/p>\n Sports: Politics: Science: Religious: Miscellaneous: More to come!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of the astronomy Facebook groups I read recently shared this link: Solar Panels Drain the Sun\u2019s Energy, Experts Say…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/ts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/ts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/ts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/ts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/ts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/ts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/ts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/ts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/ts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.christiansurfers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/526186_10150758765680659_692690658_11916313_1917157893_n1-e1333908954706.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n<\/span>Empire Sports<\/a>
\nSports Pickle<\/a><\/p>\n
\nThe Borowitz Report<\/a>
\nUnconfirmedsources.com<\/a>
\nNewslo<\/a><\/p>\n
\nThe Allium<\/a>
\nImprobable Research<\/a><\/p>\n
\nChristians for Michele Bachmann<\/a>
\nChristwire<\/a>
\nLandover Baptist Church<\/a>\u00a0(apparently a \u00a0specific parody of Westboro Baptist Church)
\nAmerica\u2019s Best Christian<\/a><\/p>\n
\nFree Wood Post<\/a>
\nNational Report<\/a>
\nThe People\u2019s Cube<\/a>
\nThis Is That<\/a><\/p>\n