Is it hard to understand Satire?

It seems as though that recognizing irony and parody is a skill but it is really hard to understand the 'joke'? I'll admit that I didn't understand satire myself until I actually studied it myself and even then I don't understand most satire. Poe's Law aside, it seems as though that most good satire seems so indistinguishable from the real thing/ I have two questions on topic:

1. Is it really hard to 'understand' the theme of the satire without getting lost or missing the points that are made? Even if its the ''target' that is being

2. Is Satire really dead? Is really hard to recognize irony?

"We are just like Irregular Data. And that applies to you too, Ri CO. And as for you, Player... your job is to correct Irregular Data."

Poe's Law ate satire.

Nous restons ici.

I guess Satire really is dead as not anyone understands the 'joke'.

"We are just like Irregular Data. And that applies to you too, Ri CO. And as for you, Player... your job is to correct Irregular Data."

There's always some people who wouldn't recognize satire if it bit them on the ass. Otherwise, though, it's down to the skill of the storyteller, as it always is.

I mean, there were plenty of people who missed the joke with Jonathan Swift's tales, so people "not getting" satire is a tradition as old as satire itself, as opposed to some recent decay.

edited 27th Jun '14 3:36:36 PM by SabresEdge

Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.

See #1 in Three Things the Internet Always Gets Wrong.

Anyhow, the thing about satire is, it doesn't matter how many people "get" it. That's simply not the point. Hell, if too many people get it, you're being too obvious. The point is to invoke change — to embarrass entities into behaving better by casting a light on their misdeeds by exaggerating them and casting a light on them.

That said, if I had a dollar for every half-wit who tried to tried to pass off something stupid they said as satire, or thought that metaphorically repeating their foes' words in a stupid voice was satire... eugh, I'd have a lot of horrible dollars.

edited 27th Jun '14 6:11:36 PM by KillerClowns

Unfortunately, Cracked is also wrong on this; once you accept that a sincere statement of an extreme and a satirical statement cannot usually be told apart, then it becomes at best irresponsible to employ satire about anything you genuinely care about, because somebody is going to take heart in your apparently serious comment.

Put another way, Cracked's argument is that satire isn't dead as a force of social change because PC can't kill it.

That's a poor tangent to the real problem, which is that satire is dead because people being satirized will instead take the satire as serious confirmation of their beliefs and worldview. The internet has given a voice to the people who would have taken A Modest Proposal seriously and used it to promote their agendas.

edited 27th Jun '14 6:22:09 PM by Night

Nous restons ici.

Heheh. Took me a minute to realize what you were doing there — quite meta. I confess, I thought you were serious until that last line.

Unfortunately you've just proved my point.

Now, go spend three hours browsing WorldNetDaily and come back. You'll understand exactly where I'm coming from.

edited 27th Jun '14 7:09:25 PM by Night

Nous restons ici.

I don't know if that flew over your head, or you're consciously choosing to be obstinate, but either way, let me try sincerity.

"People being satirized will instead take the satire as serious confirmation of their beliefs and worldview." That isn't a flaw, that's one of the satirist's greatest weapons. If you aren't tricking some of those whom you are lampooning into buying your arguments, you're doing it wrong. The goal is not to convince everybody, for such attempt will produce only the sort of middling, pitiful "everyone sucks" comedy of third-rate stand-up comedians everywhere. Ignorant cynicism disguising itself as world-weary hard wisdom only impresses angsty teenagers and Robert Kagan.

Let me give you an example. Here, we're going to step outside the bounds of technical satire and into parody, but we're examining Poe's Law, not satire specifically. The Onion's article, Harry Potter Books Spark Rise In Satanism Among Children. As per Poe's Law, yeah, the far right bit. WorldNetDaily, which you mentioned, was among those who took it seriously. (With thanks to Snopes for maintaining a link to the original.)

And it made the far right look ridiculous. Poe's Law strengthened the parody, giving it new life and strength. What would have otherwise been a forgettable jest earning a few chuckles went viral, spreading across the internet, giving those sympathetic to the Onion's left-of-center views yet another way to hammer a wedge between the center (i.e. the average American, enamored with the Harry Potter books) and the far right.

So, to summarize. Poe's Law states, verbatim, "without a blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of extremism or fundamentalism that someone won't mistake for the real thing." That is literally all it says. It does not state that this makes such parody — or, by extension, its sharper cousin, satire — useless. That is a conclusion you added from your own misunderstanding of the purpose of such comedic forms. To the contrary, is allows the comedian to better divide the changeable from the hopeless, perhaps converting the former and often weakening the latter.

edited 28th Jun '14 9:04:08 AM by KillerClowns

Jon Stewart would like to have a word on this.

This argument is, again, tangential to the point: satire doesn't do good for the cause it's satirizing for, it reinforces the causes it satirizes against.

The far right doesn't need help looking ridiculous. Witness the Mississippi primaries where, in announcing they would police the polls to keep black Democrats from voting for Thad Cochran, they essentially gave Mississippi Democrats a holy mission to resist suppression of the black vote.

Poe's Law is about the impossibility of producing satire that can't be taken as ammunition by those being satirized. The problem is that you're failing to account for how polarized society is and how that polarization breaks down in action. A political system that incentivizes riling up the base over reaching others makes satire a weapon for those it opposes, while it fails to effectively rouse those it is intended for to action by portraying the other side as fools who will defeat themselves. The core mechanism you're proposing for satire doesn't work the way you think it works in the modern world, because people don't react to it the way you seem to think they do.

More than half his viewership was Republican last year. Care to guess why?

edited 28th Jun '14 10:26:59 AM by Night

Nous restons ici.

I just realized this argument is currently pointless — we are arguing theoreticals from different realities. Do you have any actual evidence to back up your claims? I'm talking real research, not just anecdotes. Before you ask, you're right, I don't either. I should have known better. So if you'll excuse me, I'll be looking for academic literature on the effects of satire.

EDIT: Speaking of which:

Citation needed, and note that this number, barring evidence to the contrary, could very well include young libertarians who vehemently oppose their party's elders on a number of matters.

edited 28th Jun '14 11:18:41 AM by KillerClowns

So, on the one hand, it turns out academic research on satire is rare and often paywalled. *Grumbles.* Wish I knew a sociologist or something.

On the other hand, I had the weirdest thought. Night, you still have provided no actual evidence to support your case of extremists successfully using satire to support their cause. Poisoning their cause by using it, well, I've already given an example. But satire strengthening the extremist base? Can you actually provide a single, discrete example, verified by a reasonably authoritative external link, that this actually happens?

Oh, and we still haven't seen proof of that thing you said about the Daily Show. And according to a Pew Study done in 2010, what you said is demonstrably false. Unless you have updated numbers to share?

edited 29th Jun '14 7:07:53 AM by KillerClowns

Is possible to make a satire on satires?

"We are just like Irregular Data. And that applies to you too, Ri CO. And as for you, Player... your job is to correct Irregular Data."