Satire in text

When I originally saw the post linked below, I went quickly from "who cares" to incredulous to laughing out loud. While I may use LOL in a text, I rarely actually do so. But, this post is a gem.

The post is now ten years old and some of the allusions are out of date, for example, AOL went through a period in the late 90's where customers regularly had trouble getting connected – wanting a new ISP would be expected. I'll tell you (with all the certainty I can muster) that this is very well done satire. Unfortunately many of the links in the article now fail, but they seem to have all gone to innocuous sites (like a book about parenting).

The article is called "Is Your Son a Computer Hacker?" It seems to have first appeared on adequacy.org, but other copies are available. I recommend the original — the comments are funnier than the post itself. Enjoy!

How this applies

There are several ways this applies to what we have, or will cover. I couldn't think of a better place to link it in than here, where we discuss evaluating a source. (Remember that there is nothing in the original that says, "Hey, this is a joke.") So, a couple points:

• Apparently, the many upset commenters didn't bother checking out all the references they didn't understand. I love the posts where they say point N is false, but point M is true. (They are all quite silly.) Anyone researching each point would discover this. That leaves you with a choice: either the writer is entirely, and consistently, clueless or a master of satire (with too much time to waste).
• Even extremely well-written satire will be misunderstood by readers. That's a clue to be careful about what you post, email or text. If it can be misconstrued, it will be. ;-)
  • By the way, that's where all those emoticons originated. Trying to clarify text that does not carry tone of voice or facial expression. After all, we have misunderstandings even when talking to people in person. :-(

Still don't know if the post is "real"?

Did you look at the site? The poll in the sidebar? The other articles linked? (You might want to look at Godwin's law for the Milosevic article.) How about the home page and mission statement? (The latter says: this site is for A, not B; and this site is for B, not A.)