Basic Trope: The more outrageous a statement, product or service, organization, etc. is, the more difficult it is to tell whether it's genuine or satirical.
- Straight: Bob creates a website that purports to allow parents to sell teenage girls to older men as brides, in the same way marriages were arranged back in Bible Times, by paying the requested bride price, and submitting a suitable proposal. None of the "proposals" ever gets a reply, as no actual girls are being sold into marriage in this way via Bob's website. Everyone thinks Bob is a sicko running a child-sex trafficking ring, although the website was really set up to draw attention to inconsistencies in the marriage laws of Tropestan.
- Exaggerated:
- Some of the girls advertised for "sale" as "brides" are literally babies.
- Bob's website is affiliated with a well-known "fake news" website, such as The Garlic.
- Downplayed: Bob almost reproduces an entire, legitimate story, Ripped from the Headlines, but with enough changed that some people would be confused by his intent.
- Justified:
- Satire doesn't always announce itself as such. In fact, it works better if you Don't Explain the Joke until later.
- Bob's attempt at satire is so close to the real thing that people genuinely can't tell that it's meant to be satire.
- Worse things have been allowed or proposed. The public wouldn't really be surprised if it wasn't satire.
- Inverted:
- Everyone thinks Bob is joking, but he's being serious, and the website really does allow fundamentalist parents to sell their daughters into marriage to older men.
- People are confused and outraged by Bob's statement on his blog condemning child marriage.
- Subverted:
- Bob creates a website that actually allows fundamentalist parents to sell their daughters into marriage to older men.
- Bob writes that the website is satire.
- People figure out that Bob is joking.
- Double Subverted:
- Bob isn't arrested because no one believes there's actually a website like that out there, or that child marriage is in any way, shape, or form legal in Tropestan.
- The announcement is in easy-to-miss fine print, so people miss the fact that it's satire.
- But they get upset with him because someone, somewhere might think this is OK and set up a service like that for real.
- Parodied: Bob works the phrase "This Is Wrong on So Many Levels!" into his post, whether subtly or not, but he still gets unwanted praise from a Misaimed Fandom, undeserved flak from Moral Guardians, or both.
- Zig-Zagged:
- Some readers think it's satire; others are convinced it's sincere.
- Bob says some things that are satiric and others that are sincere.
- Averted: Bob doesn't say anything controversial or outrageous on his website or blog.
- Enforced: Bob is trying to make a point about inconsistencies in state or provincial marriage laws in Tropestan.
- Lampshaded: "Is this guy really trying to sell teenage girls as brides on the Internet?"
- Invoked: Bob is outraged by a newspaper article about a thirteen-year-old girl being married off to a forty-year-old man, completely legally.
- Defied: Bob, knowing that some people won't get it, writes a non-edgy letter to his government leaders.
- Exploited: Bob wants lawmakers to see the website and change the laws, to protect teenagers from early and forced marriage.
- Discussed: "I want to think he's making fun of such patriarchal attitudes, but he'd have a better chance of success if he made it clear to people who hold it seriously."
- Conversed: "This show is so confusing … I don't think the creator approves of underage girls being married off, but why write a Troubled Sympathetic Bigot character who does?!"
- Deconstructed: Bob's message strikes a chord with the wrong people, who manage to buy his domain and defictionalize the service, thus enabling an action he was trying to stop.
- Reconstructed: These hackers are confused and frustrated when their supposed audience of buyers don't take the website seriously, believing it to be an insane hoax or elaborate trolling. When they attempt to go back to Bob to fix this, Bob regains control of the website and proves that it wasn't meant to succeed.
- Implied: Alice and Adam have a heated conversation about something Bob wrote or said. They're as up in arms about whether he meant them to treat the content seriously as whatever it was (the latter is not revealed to us).
Back to Poe's Law.
