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So, White Man's Burden, you're a poem. And more then a century after Kipling wrote you, scholars still disagree over whether he was kidding. —John Green, Crash Course (web video)

These examples, as absurd as they may seem on the surface, are not outliers or aberrations — they are some of the most massively viral “Is this true?” subjects we’ve ever undertaken. They put the lie to common refrains about “obvious humor,” “obvious satire,” “obvious jokes,” or “obvious” anything else. Quite evidently nothing can be put online — no matter how preposterous in concept or plainly labeled it might be — that some people won’t believe to be true (or at least allow might be true). —Snopes on why they cover satire.

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. — RationalWiki, 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/

@FeminismDaiIy: More mirrors need this 💕 (photo of a mirror with sticky note): warning: Reflections in this mirror may be distorted by socially constructed ideas of 'beauty' @ChristiJunior: Wow, this is actually not a parody account.. — from Twitter

It is the divine will of our Lord Kek that our enemies be parodies, living cartoons for our amusement. The memes must flow. —Sisyphus Rex, on Twitter (this tweet and OP are SFW, but since the thread was about an activist/"performance artist" specializing in lobster porn Body Horror/porn collages, some of the rest is beyond NSFW and in "keep Brain Bleach nearby" area)

Handle: Every time I watch that ’10:10 no pressure’ video I cannot quite bring myself to believe it was made in total earnest and not the result of some insider sabotage and subversion. Just plausible enough to get the contract, but so absurdly demonstrative of the fanatically coercive nature of the climate campaign that it can’t possibly have been made by someone actually trying to rally the troops while making not-so-subtle threats to holdouts. Handle: And then I see things like the Obamacare ho-surance ads, or pajama-boy, and I get the chills thinking, “Oh God, it’s not sabotage at all, is it? The true believers made this all by themselves and they really think it’s funny and effective. Lord protect us.” Jim: It looked as if I scripted and directed it to colorfully dramatize and illustrate my wicked claim that warmists are blood crazed totalitarians. Jim: They start with murdering children, and then the revolution devours its own. Jim: But there are plenty more where that came from: Recall the cutting video on female circumcision. The Klu Klux Klan would have been embarassed to make that one. Jim: [...] If white supremacists who advocate the forced sterilization of the entire black race did this then the cake cutting would not seem out of place, but this was supposedly done by their opposites. [...] Jim: Recall how the animal rights activists wanted the worlds most cute and cuddly orphaned polar bear cub killed? — comments on The overclass hates you in Jim's blog

There is no idea so stupid that you can't find a professor who will believe it. —H. L. Mencken

It has come to our attention that some people are suggesting that "dog paper" was accepted because reviewers are busy people and "is same as physics journal accepting a paper with fake data" To dispel such notions, we shall publish reviewer comments to Dog rape paper. It starts off slow and fairly optimistic, with paper being rejected (they almost dodged the bullet here, didn't theEE [picture] EEE wait a minute... oh... oh wow, "animals and black feminist geographies", now that's an unfortunate turn of phrase... [picture] Now, what will reviewers want after some more "feminist geographies" was added to the text? Well, for one all of them are now supportive of the work in the under-explored area of dog rape culture [picture] Reviewer 1 is very concerned about ethics of inspecting dog genitals without dog's consent, and the inequality that represents relative to human "participants" [picture] Reviewer 2 is concerned about methodology... perhaps they have some intact sanity and will come to realize that... oh... [picture] oh... oh NO oh NO Oh NO NONONONONONONONONO  Reviewer 2 you were the CHOSEN ONE, you were supposed to DESTROY THE NONSENSE, NOT JOIN IT! [picture] Reviewer 3 seems to raise important points regarding absence of due process in dog rape accusations [picture] Reviewer 3 also seems to believe that dog rape is a whiteness issue, takes issue with the paper being too much like a "science paper", and wants even more Black Feminism(s). We do, however, agree with R3 that Harlan Weaver is indeed very relevant to the issue of dog rape culture [picture] After even more Black Feminism(s) were added, the paper was accepted, with Managing Editor even claiming to be "pleased" by this turn of events. THE END (OR IS IT?) — @RealPeerReview thread on a hoax paper titled Human reactions to rape culture and queer performativity at urban dog parks in Portland, Oregon.

The notion that the nursery rhyme “Sing a Song of Sixpence” was used as a recruiting song for pirates was invented by us as an example of a story so incredibly silly that no one could possibly believe it to be true. —Snopes, "Mostly True Stories Sixpence Error"

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