• The Quuuuuill@slrpnk.net
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    3 months ago

    I think a lot of our rise of extremism is that on places like 4chan and 8chan the people who were being sarcastic and the people that weren’t assumed the people they were interacting with were in the same headspace they were, and further, as time went on the two positions became blended.

    • blackbelt352@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Poes law in name has been around for about as long as 4chan, but Nathan Poe was making an observation based on a Christian forum in a debate on creationism and before Poe made his observation and became the name of the law, Jerry Schwartz posted advising against using sarcasm unless you put something marking it as satire on Usenet in 1983. This effect was known well before 4chan, dating back to the days of Usenet.

      If you don’t say you’re joking on the internet, someone will take something at face value without getting the joke.