Dan Olson has a great video on this (and how it relates to The Simpsons, specifically) and another on how claiming something is satire has become an automatic response when something you do or say gets criticized, but even that is merely scratching the surface of how satire and culture interact. This is a rabbit hole all its own that I could literally spend hours talking about, but that would be counterproductive. That’s the basis of Poe’s Law: Without a blatant display of comedy, it is impossible to create a parody of extremism or fundamentalism that someone won’t mistake for the real thing. By using the words and concepts of the thing you are satirizing, you are often giving voice to those words and concepts, and someone out there is going to agree with those words, not the actual point of your satire. And some dots started connecting in the back of my brain.Īnd therein lies the problem: Satire is always walking the razor’s edge. And then I remembered how, back when GamerGate was still a thing that people took seriously, how they would often use repurposed images from Warhammer 40k as propaganda. And then after I wrote a particularly divisive article for TMS back in January, I started getting exposed to the less friendly elements of Warhammer 40k’s fanbase and it started to get stuck in my brain. It annoys me when people I dislike share an appreciation for something I like, but I brushed it off.īut I kept seeing that picture, and similar images, popping up all over the internet.
It was a little like enjoying Liar’s Poker (which I do) and then finding out that some Wall Street creeps used it as a guide (which they did). I was a young innocent oh those many months ago, but that picture caused a twinge in me. It was last December, when Trump’s campaign was swinging into high gear. It all started when I saw a picture of Trump photoshopped to be the God-Emperor of Mankind.