Poe's Law/Quotes

"Imagine if, in 1729, there had been a number of letters to the editor by various authors proposing that Irish children be exterminated and eaten. Imagine that laws of that nature were being seriously debated in Parliament, and that one of the parties had made it a part of their platform. While the laws were being regularly defeated, opponents still had to stand up and seriously debate why it was unethical to eat babies. Imagine that a candidate for prime minister actually solemnly suggested that we ought to at least consider the merits of eating Irish children.

In that context, Swift's essay would have fallen flat as a cowflop dropped from the Tower of London. His efforts to use straight-faced absurdity and hyperbole and satire to expose the lesser injustices of the time would not have succeeded at all. The invisible quotation marks would be undetectable, because there would have been a substantial background of equivalent proposals given in absolute seriousness."

- PZ Myers

"There are a number of spoof sites on religion (and it's a measure of what's at the bottom of the barrel on the religious side that it can be hard to tell the spoofs from the real deal). There is, for example, The Society of Christians for the Restoration of Old Testament Morality (sorry if I blew your cover) or Landover Baptist Church (much easier to identify as a spoof, although I have no doubt there are people who miss it). Read their mail page. Read the religious believers praising them for their stance. Then read the nonbelievers flaming them. Then come back here and tell me with a straight face that nonbelievers are inherently more rational, better informed, and better at critical reasoning than believers."

- Steven Dutch, The Dumbest Statements About Religion

"Some conservatives consider noted homophobe Fred Phelps to be so over-the-top that they think he's a "deep cover liberal" trying to discredit more mainstream homophobes."

- Rational Wiki, on this trope

"Most of the themes in my comic strip "Dilbert" involve workplace situations. I routinely include bizarre and unworldly elements such as talking animals, troll-like accountants, and employees turning into dishrags after the life-force has been drained from their bodies. And yet the comment I hear most often is: "That's just like my company.""

- Scott Adams, The Dilbert Principle

"HAHAHAHAHA - Oh wait, you were serious, let me laugh even harder."

- Bender Bending Rodriguez, Futurama

"The problem with irony and satire is the dumb motherfuckers don't get﻿ it."

- Ray Wylie Hubbard

"If the video was intended to be a parody of teen pop convention, it would be on par with some of the best SNL Digital Shorts by Lonely Island."

- Rolling Stone's review of "Friday" by Rebecca Black

"And what I'm doing now, as everyone in this room understands - just in case there's anyone from the Mail On Sunday watching this - is I was using an exaggerated form of the rhetoric and implied values of Top Gear to satirize the rhetoric and the implied values of Top Gear. And it is a shame to break character to explain that, but hopefully it will save you a long, tedious exchange of emails."

- Stewart Lee, after a rant satirizing the behavior of Richard Hammond and Jeremy Clarkson.

"Side note are gender studies real? I always thought it was an Internet joke."

- from /tg/