Poe's law


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

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 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 wrote that "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.