Poe's law is an internet adage which states that, without a clear indicator of the author's intent, parodies of extremism are indistinguishable from sincere expressions of extremism.^[1][2] Poe's Law implies that parody will often be mistaken for sincere belief, and sincere beliefs for parody.^[3]

History[edit]

"Poe's Law" was originally written by Nathan Poe in 2005, in a post on christianforums.com, an internet forum about Christianity. The post was written in the context of a debate about creationism, where a previous poster had remarked "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 uttrerly [sic] impossible to parody a Creationist in such a way that someone won't mistake for the genuine article.".^[1] 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.^[3]

Poe's post was a restatement of advice often posted on internet forums, about the need to clearly mark sarcasm and parody (e.g., with a smiling emoticon) to avoid confusion. As early as 1983, Jerry Schwarz, in a post on Usenet, wrote:

Avoid sarcasm and facetious remarks.

Without the voice inflection and body language of personal communication these are easily misinterpreted. A sideways smile, :-), has become widely accepted on the net as an indication that "I'm only kidding". If you submit a satiric item without this symbol, no matter how obvious the satire is to you, do not be surprised if people take it seriously.^[4]