
When does satire become misinformation? - newman8r
https://www.quod.us/article/when-does-satire-become-misinformation
======
apeace
Remember when Tina Fey used to play Sarah Palin on SNL? I was not a
McCain/Palin supporter, but often found myself in the uncomfortable position
of defending her against those skits.

Probably a dozen people I knew or met thought that Sarah Palin _actually
believed_ she could "see Russia from her house", as the famous line went[1].

What Palin had actually said in an ABC interview was, "They're our next-door
neighbors, and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an
island in Alaska."[2]

I would have been game to criticize her _actual_ statement, a fairly empty
argument that she somehow had foreign policy experience. But no --- good
friends of mine actually believed this was a real statement. No amount of
Googling could fix this problem, as I would then face the criticism that I was
"getting information from the internet".

I want to like political satire, but every time I watch/read it I think back
to the dozens of instances like this one where I have felt like an outsider
simply for arguing that something on a comedy show was not actually real, and
we should only debate things that were really said or happened.

[1] [https://youtu.be/vSOLz1YBFG0?t=78](https://youtu.be/vSOLz1YBFG0?t=78)

[2]
[http://archive.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/09/26/pa...](http://archive.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/09/26/palin_defends_remark_on_russia/)

~~~
panarky
What makes it satire is that it exaggerates the facts to shine a spotlight on
their absurdity. The Tina Fey bit isn't literally true, but it does show the
absurdity of Palin's statements pretty well.

~~~
xtiansimon
And everytime Palin said something else absurd, Tina Fey's joke was the rim-
shot. It stuck not because it was informative, but because the joke would
_fit_ into the massive ironic _gap_ Palin's words made for anyone who wasn't
her intended audience.

------
chrisseaton
'It's just satire' is like the 'it's just a prank bro' defence.

If you spend your life deliberately misinterpreting things to get a cheap
laugh, then at some point it's not really any different to just being
genuinely ignorant.

When people like Stewart take little short cuts with the truth to get the
laugh it's disappointing as well - why couldn't be find a smart joke or
insightful comment that is actually based on the truth?

~~~
contravariant
It's a bit of weird defence for misinformation though as satire doesn't become
better when it represents a position inaccurately. In fact the opposite is the
case, the closer you can remain to the truth while still being comical the
better the satire.

------
cabaalis
Very recently I heard Jon Stewart mentioned on NPR and it was in the context
of his influence on American politics. It is indeed disingenuous for him to
imply that his commentary during that time was just meaningless satire. I
would wager that in 2004 Jon Stewart had much more control over the opinion of
the voting bloc than Tucker Carlson, and I would secondly wager that he damn
well knew it.

~~~
smt88
I agree, but he also made his jokes so silly that no one could've mistaken
them for reality. Most were accompanied by bad Photoshop thumbnails.

~~~
chrisseaton
I don't think that's true.

For example he joked that Fox News viewers were "most consistently misinformed
media viewers". This wasn't actually true (according to PolitiFact, if you
believe them more than him) and I guess it was just a joke, but he just said
it with a straight face in a serious interview so there was no indication it
was any kind of joke.

In this case he was forced to accept that it simply wasn't true and apologised
for misleading people with the joke, but usually his response is to just shrug
his shoulders and basically say 'it was a prank bro'.

[http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-
meter/statements/2011/jun/...](http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-
meter/statements/2011/jun/20/jon-stewart/jon-stewart-says-those-who-watch-fox-
news-are-most/)

~~~
ghaff
I think that's pretty fair. Certainly a lot of Stewart's fans took him as a
modern take on the evening news anchors and I have no particular reason to
think he tried to disabuse them of that impression. And my impression (as not
a regular watcher) is he did see himself as a provider of information as well
as a comedian. The issue I sometimes had (and this goes well beyond Stewart)
is that you can be a comedian or you can be a journalist and when you mix the
roles it's uncomfortable.

------
edent
I've also been thinking about this. Media literacy is a form of privilege. Not
everyone has had the luxury of growing up reading the satire sections of the
newspaper.

We have to accept that lots of people simply won't get the joke. That's fine
when it's an article in an obscure magazine, or by a known humorist - but
social media strips away that context.

Perhaps the web needs a laugh-track.

[https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2018/04/what-do-we-do-about-
people-...](https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2018/04/what-do-we-do-about-people-who-
dont-get-the-joke/)

~~~
scottybowl
Can you explain how reading a newspaper is a privilege?

~~~
rainbowmverse
Not everyone comes from places where being informed is a value. Some even come
from families or communities where wanting to learn makes them a target.

~~~
BeetleB
>Not everyone comes from places where being informed is a value. Some even
come from families or communities where wanting to learn makes them a target.

Take your statement and apply it to other values. As an example:

Not everyone comes from places where being honest is a value. Acting honestly
is a privilege and the lack of it in a person should not be viewed negatively.

Not everyone comes from places where saving for a rainy day is a value. Not
spending your whole paycheck on non-essentials is a privilege and the if a
person spends all his money on things he likes we should sympathize with his
predicament when he has an emergency.

At what level are we going to take the notion of privilege? Suggesting that
people read a newspaper regularly is in no way being insensitive to the other
person's situation. If they come from a place where it makes them a target, I
would suggest they first focus on changing their environment. You don't make
progress by being passive.

~~~
rainbowmverse
I just spoke from personal experience to answer scottybowl's question. (the
answer: anyone can, but not everyone feels like it's meant for them)

Someone else can look at your thought experiments if they want and help you
sort it out.

~~~
BeetleB
Perhaps I jumped the gun. I assumed you were implying that suggesting someone
read a newspaper is asking too much because of the person's particular
background. Unfortunately, I encounter too many folks who hold similar views.

------
thrwaway8989
The uncomfortable truth is that a large proportion of the population that
would formerly have been peripherally interested in current affairs, perhaps
watching the news on TV once in a while, and rarely reading newspapers (which
had a massive barrier to entry) are now being force-fed information. Many
don’t have well-developed critical thinking skills, and rarely needed them
before the current era.

The idea that the answer to bad speech online, is more speech, is BS, because
a truly unfiltered medium would be overwhelmed with spam, as USENET was, so
there have always been algorithms on social media curating and controlling
what people saw. If these algorithms can’t distinguish satire from reality,
neither will many who who consume their outputs.

So we’re at the mercy of ignoramuses, fed garbage by algorithms programmed by
people with (ahem) limited people skills, and being gamed by sophisticated
propagandists. God help us.

~~~
sonnyblarney
To be fair - the concept of 'news' as being 'impartial' is a rather modern
concept.

Maybe as early as 100 years ago, newspapers were just businesses, often used
by their owners as propaganda vehicles for their own business interests, and
to go on personal slander vendettas.

Some of the old-timey insults are pretty funny in retrospect.

But yes, the internet poses a challenge, and there are basically no unbiased
sources.

~~~
thrwaway8989
To clarify my point, even today, most newspapers have an agenda, in fact,
that’s probably a major reason for people owning anything larger than a small
local paper.

But. it was a pull mechanism, so the newspapers didn’t have a spigot to shove
their information down the throats of everyone who walked past the news stand.

------
awat
Here’s a pretty literal example: [https://variety.com/2017/biz/news/alec-
baldwin-snl-photo-new...](https://variety.com/2017/biz/news/alec-baldwin-snl-
photo-newspaper-trump-1201985329/)

*I don’t know this example is particularly harmful but nonetheless it illustrates things don’t always transfer perfectly

------
keypress
I must admit although I do do a little bit of satire here and there, which is
usually used as a gateway to acknowledge that someone else has followed
something vaguely topical. I'm not really that big a fan of it. And when it
comes to politics and world atrocities, we do 30mins of laughing, move along,
but the problems remain. Sometimes I think it can even devalue a subject - or
knock the wind out of anger and repellent sails. Or even just normalise
something to widespread defeatist acceptance.

In my most paranoid moments, I feel it's just another state outlet for news
and general disinformation.

I'd rather just have some grown up debate about the issues. Politics gets a
lot of news/air time, but escapes critical thinking. Where are the good
political pundits that do more than just regurgitate a press release?

Regarding the article though: I think it's always best to add some inflection
by way of an emoji, ellipsis, exclamation mark, or some other context to avoid
misinterpretation. It may take some of the fun out of it, but hey.

------
lifeisstillgood
I tend to get my IRL news from satirical quiz shows on the BBC - it is a
useful round up of the weeks main headlines and is amusing at the same time.
The economist and guardian podcasts used to do the same until they multiplied
like rabbits.

However I follow some real-in-the weeds podcasts for Brexit (which i still
claim is important and is going to hurt a lot more than most people seem to
think) and of course follow tech news here. I like podcasts because if I need
to dive into details I can just start googling.

It tends to mean i don't know about volcanos eruptions till hours after
everyone else - but I usually get something like "did you know
volcano/Bourdain has died" from a human within hours.

Ultimately I want to find a way to have important emails, whatsapp and texts
appear in the HN front page so I will be able to deal with them whilst
checking - this may be a good idea.

Edit: I seem to have dropped the traditional news media forever - a shift I am
quite shocked by as its not something i would have consciously chosen. I do
keep subscriptions to some worthwhile outlets (Guardian etc) but i doubt any
business model they have in mind right now is going to work. we shall see.

~~~
abritinthebay
Just a note: if HN is the only tech news you follow you’ll be getting a VERY
skewed & narrow view of tech.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Luckily I have a skewed and narrow mind.

More seriously, it's a jumping off point - things of interest that have
happened. It's a way of getting a decent view on overall trends. Honestly
though I don't think I can manage any more news aggregators - that's kind of
why I have defaulted to weekly satire. I have actual work to do, and keeping
uptodate is more and more a full time job with no valueable outputs.

There is a famous advice for graduates which is basically "talk to your
colleagues, cos eventually they will steer your work into fruitful directions"

I need more human talking and less news.

~~~
abritinthebay
That is a great general attitude I agree.

------
keypress
Slashdot used to have the 'witty' attribute that you could filter by. It's
useful to be able to dump lame arsed attempts at facile humour. (The web seems
to be riddled with it.)

~~~
massysett
Slashdot had the best moderation system ever. I used to dock "Funny" posts by
2 points, so I would see the top ones but drop the others. It also had a
maximum of 5 plus points, and downvoting needed a reason, and "disagree" or
"you're not in the groupthink" were not reasons.

------
RoutinePlayer
Satire = joke + partial truth. It can become misinformation when people lack
the sensibility to see or hear the actual joke and/or miss the partial truth
.. nothing here to read, move along, move along.

~~~
newman8r
Having the sensibility to consistently understand humor and satire is
something a lot of HN readers probably take for granted. When I was 10 years
old I probably only understood half the jokes on the simpsons - it makes re-
watching those old episodes entertaining.

~~~
keypress
Some of it is about patting your own back just because you remembered
something. Like when you laugh at a comedy routine when they resurface
something they said ten minutes earlier.

------
hashkb
If you are constantly missing the joke, sharpen your sense of humor. If you're
constantly fooled by fake news, sharpen your critical thinking.

It's the right to free speech (which we already have) vs the right to be
wrong, lazy, and biased (which we don't, and being an idiot should have
negative consequences).

------
mozumder
I learned about all this from Starship Troopers, with my friends and I
noticing the satire immediately while watching it at the theatre.

It was basically Colbert Report before Colbert Report, literally making fun of
its source material. The thing is, very few people got it, including
professional reviewers. A reviewer from the Washington Post even mentioned how
nothing made sense and seemed way more fascist than intended, noticing the
similarities between Doogie Howser's uniform and a Nazi SS uniform.

It really was privilege to know satire, and we have to tread carefully when
using satire to make a case, because very few people will actually get it.

~~~
ghaff
And it's also a good example of how the lines delineating satire can be fuzzy.
(Hence </s> tags and the like.)

After all, as you suggest, you don't _have_ to approach Starship Troopers as
satire. I think it's a better movie viewed through that lens. But you can
absolutely watch it as a straight (and not very good) adaptation of Heinlein's
novel.

~~~
Udik
> ... not very good adaptation of Heinlein's novel

Why? It's an excellent apology of fascism disguised into a cheap sci-fi
blockbuster with a teenager comedy's aesthetics. It really makes you wonder on
whom the joke really is.

------
newman8r
BTW I did a Show HN for Quod a couple of days ago but it didn't get much
attention - any feedback is appreciated.

~~~
Shank
I really like the concept, though I think the initial stage might benefit from
surfacing content from "top" websites as opposed to just votes. It's much more
important to catch misinformation in larger, well known media sources, than it
is to catch it on a random forum, for example. That's just my opinion, though.

~~~
newman8r
Yeah that's a good point, I hadn't even thought about sorting it that way. It
would definitely be better to prioritize content from CNN or Washington Post
over a reddit post.

I'll probably implement something like that very soon.

~~~
Shank
> It would definitely be better to prioritize content from CNN or Washington
> Post over a reddit post.

I would just like to point out that while totally unintentional, you just
rattled off only left-wing sites. You absolutely need to make sure that, when
listing off examples, you are being neutral in these examples. Even if you
_are_ a neutral third party, it may not look that way to people if you only
list off certain news sources.

Being neutral is critical to being trusted in a situation a site with
responsibility like this. I want to see you succeed -- not get labeled as
"attacking" one or the other side.

~~~
newman8r
You're absolutely right, we all have inherent biases and my goal with Quod is
to create an environment where anyone can contribute regardless of political
affiliation. Some of the problems with other fact checking sites is that they
have small editorial panels, so bias can be an issue.

Ideally, if Quod succeeds, my personal politics would not impact the site in
any way whatsoever. Most of the initial reports on Quod were my own (since
nobody else is going to report them) and I did try to grab a fairly equal
amount of posts from the left and right.

Anyway your feedback is appreciated and I agree that as an operator of the
service I should try to act as a neutral party and I will keep that in mind
going forward.

------
DanielBMarkham
As a history buff, sometimes people ask me: what's the most accurate history
movie? (It gets asked on the reddit History forum a lot also)

The answer: none of them. If you see it on a screen, it's been modified
somehow for the medium of movies and to make movie audiences happy. That's not
history, that's entertainment.

We saw the first "fake" documentaries pop up in the late 80s. They looked like
documentaries, sure, but really they were advocacy pieces disguised as
documentaries. They weren't documenting something. They had an agenda.

Eventually they also became entertainment. Now you can turn on the TV and see
dozens of different documentaries about all sorts of topics. They churn them
out like popcorn. It looks like a documentary, they say it's a documentary,
but it's not.

Back in the 70s and 80s, satire was just that: satire. It was humor first and
foremost. Comedians picked on anybody and everybody. Don Rickles would
famously insult anybody in the crowd. Don loved people, but he was a comedian.
Because he loved people, audiences let him practice his craft: insult comedy.

That changed, probably with the advent of political talk radio in the late
80s, although I'm not an expert. Humor became a way of solidifying whatever
clan you were in. The art didn't come first any more, the clan did. This
wasn't humor as fun, this was humor as a weapon, a social signal. The common
use of satire now isn't to make fun of life, it's a form of ritualized
mocking. It looks like humor, they say it's humor, but it's not. It's the same
thing kids used to do when they made jokes and picked on disabled kids at
school, only it's okay because it's somebody of the other political party.
It's gotten so bad that many comedians don't do college appearances. Students
are much more interested in belonging to a clan than simply enjoying art that
joyfully makes fun of the world around us. You throw any kind of satire at
them and they're much more interested in _which side is this guy on, anyway?_
than whether it was funny or not. That's what they've been taught that satire
is: signaling. That sucks.

My point is this: everything is misinformation. Life is complex. We use art
and narrative to take that complexity and make something cartoonish out of it
so we can make sense of it. You have to be extremely careful using satire
online because so many people view it is simply more of the same; it fits into
some simplified narrative they have in their heads. There's no sense of
making-fun-of-yourself humor. Instead it's misrepresenting people in the
"other group" in order to get a few laughs at how superior you are. When
others use satire, you can quite easily view it as confirmation that you were
right all along instead of just being fun.

~~~
philipkglass
1935's _Triumph of the Will_ is a documentary. It documents the 1934 Nuremberg
Rally of the Nazi Party. It is _also_ pro-Nazi Party propaganda. A film can be
a documentary and advocate for a certain agenda. These dual-purpose films
existed long before the late 1980s.

I believe that most documentaries _do_ advocate something. Documentarians
adhering to Wikipedia-like NPOV rules of presentation are rarer than other
sorts.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Well heck, _Birth of a Nation_ was probably considered as a documentary too
when it was shot -- along with a lot of war movies.

My larger point was that to produce anything for the public, it must be
simplified. That always requires bias. Satire has stopped being entertainment
and instead is a way to simplify things. We tell a joke _in lieu_ of
explaining something. (As the old documentaries were supposed to do: explain
something) Once satire takes on that role, it's always going to be
misinformation to some degree or another.

------
weiming
Saw this bit from Bill Maher's show yesterday:

 _“I feel like the bottom has to fall out at some point, and by the way, I’m
hoping for it because I think one way you get rid of Trump is a crashing
economy. So please, bring on the recession. Sorry if that hurts people but
it’s either root for a recession, or you lose your democracy.”_

I understand it's supposed to be comedy, but this sounded way too serious and
not at all well-meaning.

~~~
furgooswft13
You mean this [https://www.mediaite.com/tv/maher-says-hes-hoping-for-
anothe...](https://www.mediaite.com/tv/maher-says-hes-hoping-for-another-
recession-to-get-rid-of-trump-sorry-if-that-hurts-people-but/) ?

Sounded dead serious to me, and it is coming from someone who will be 100%
fine during any recession. "Would you rather have your job/home
or......Democracy.......hahaha no I'll have my TV show and millions of dollars
either way". It might have been comedy/satire if he acknowledge how pompous he
sounds.

I did not watch the rest of the show, but this clip is not comedy, it's
regular political commentary/bickering with the addition of a cheer track.

~~~
ghaff
Sounds to me like something that falls into the half-joking category. It's of
the form, hate to say it but $BAD_THING would be worth it if it would get rid
of the president/congress/etc. where you can make $BAD_THING arbitrarily bad
until it's pretty outrageous and is obviously not meant to be taken seriously.

------
twineiggen
Blame Fox News for the necessity and utility of Jon Stewart at the moment the
2003 Iraq war transistioned from suspicion to fact.

So now we have the Alt Right as the counter point to this manner of discourse.
It’s the bizarro Jon Stewart, so what next?

Most of this is simple Newtonian action/reaction. Insult, then retaliation.
I’m not sure what guided adaptation will bring about, as we move through the
next volley.

~~~
BeetleB
>Blame Fox News for the necessity and utility of Jon Stewart at the moment the
2003 Iraq war transistioned from suspicion to fact.

This is ridiculous. I was a news junkie around that time, and pretty much all
the TV news outlets in the US were uncritical of the war, and dissenting
voices were barely given any air time. Jon Stewart would have been as relevant
had Fox News not existed at the time.

I'll probably get in trouble for mentioning it, as people seem to have strong
opinions on the matter, but the Peter Arnett episode, in my mind, highlights
how unwilling any major news outlet was in seriously questioning the war:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Arnett#Interview_in_Iraq](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Arnett#Interview_in_Iraq)

Also, MSNBC's canceling of Donahue due to Phil Donahue's opposition to the
war.

------
sillysaurus3
I think it matters whether someone is joking.

Pogo
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bl5TUw7sUBs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bl5TUw7sUBs)
and
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQuqeLBTetA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQuqeLBTetA)
etc) recently answered the question "Why is your Youtube name Fagottron?"

[https://www.youtube.com/user/Fagottron](https://www.youtube.com/user/Fagottron)

In a moment of somewhat poor judgement, he said, essentially, "I've always
hated gay people." But he was joking.

The joke was that gay haters are often so over the top that they will sound
completely ridiculous -- like, say, naming their Youtube channel Fagottron as
a way to rub in the gay hate.

The original video has been removed, but here's a part:
[https://youtu.be/-8y553PV0Gg?t=52](https://youtu.be/-8y553PV0Gg?t=52)

The internet of course exploded at this, and soon the hornet's nest came out
at him. The general mindset was apparently "I know you were joking, I don't
care that you were joking, enjoy your ruined career."

Now, to be clear, if you watch the original video, there's probably no way for
you to tell it was a joke. He sounded dead serious. But he _was_ in fact
joking, and I think that's an important distinction.

It's... getting unsettling unsettling that people can lose their careers over
this sort of thing. Pogo will probably be ok, but it's strange that it was
even an issue.

Part of the problem is the culture of outrage. Outrage = clicks, and media
knows this. That's why it's so easy to write articles like these:
[https://i.imgur.com/oVvsN3q.png](https://i.imgur.com/oVvsN3q.png)

Another name for this type of joke is trolling, and that would be a fair
description this case. But to mark someone for life -- to discount their hard
work and to try to ruin them over something that was satire, is strange to me.

~~~
chrisseaton
I've no idea why anyone tries to communicate using satire or sarcasm today.
It's absolutely begging to be misunderstood, and then it's impossible correct
because yes that is literally what you wrote and it's there in black and
white. It must be the least clear and most risky way to communicate possible.

~~~
matte_black
Satire and sarcasm are best used in the company of people who will understand
it. It is not for use with the masses.

When someone is sarcastic or uses satire on you, you should take it as a
complement, as it means they believe you have the intellectual capacity to
grasp the joke, enough to take the risk in telling it to you.

When you respond with sarcasm or satire of your own, it confirms to them that
you have found common ground, and that your satire/sarcasm can slowly lift
into even higher levels of wit, almost trying to outdo each other.

When someone doesn’t get my satirical jokes, I write them off as a simpleton
and use only small, safe jokes with them, if at all.

If you are going to make a sarcastic joke publicly, it is best to also make
sure there is some sort of external approval in the form of laughing or
upvotes to go along with it, otherwise it can easily be misinterpreted as your
own serious opinion.

~~~
chrisseaton
> When someone doesn’t get my satirical jokes, I write them off as a simpleton
> and use only small, safe jokes with them, if at all.

Maybe they go away thinking you're the simpleton for saying something which
isn't true or doesn't make any sense? It seems like this is a whole system of
snideness designed to judge people and justify being condescending to them. I
think it's just unpleasant.

