What's one step up from Poe's Law?

WARNING: This thread contains some political content. All reasonable actions have been taken to prevent this from degenerating into a political thread, but proceed at your own risk.

Today, a Facebook friend who is rabidly anti-Obama posted a link to a story about how House Republicans had started proceedings to impeach Obama. I hadn’t heard this elsewhere, so I clicked just to see what was going on.

This is what I found. If you read the story, it gradually becomes increasingly obvious that it’s satire, which is easily confirmed by looking at other headlines on the site. Now, this friend is the type who would be all in favor of an actual impeachment, and would never in a million years find this funny, so he obviously thinks this is a real story.

So what do you call it when an attempt to make your opposition look over-the-top ridiculous is mistaken for fact by the very people being ridiculed?

I’d say it’s a textbook example of Poe’s Law.

I loved this fake quote from Ghomert about Obama:

“All this clown needs to do is repeal the most important law he ever passed, and then this will all be over. Why is that so hard? The Tea Party represents almost 22 percent of Americans. Only a dictator would refuse to give us everything we want.”

Yes, it’s a perfect example of Poe’s Law. It’s simultaneously outrageous and uncomfortably close to what’s actually happening.

n/m wrong thread.

See, when I think of Poe’s Law, I think of, for instance, a hard-core Democrat reading a fake story that makes Republicans look stupid and buying into it. That’s easier to understand than when a Republican reads the same story and also buys into it.

We have more of a tendency to believe that those who disagree with us are stupid, and so we swallow ridiculous stories about them relatively easily. I think it takes a special level of gullibility to buy into a story like this that mocks your own side.

I recall how Norman Spinrad’s The Iron Dream, among other things a mockery of Hitler and Nazism got on the recommended reading list for the American Nazi Party.

Somewhat like Report From Iron Mountain.

The Real Story
What some people think it is

This did remind me of the existence of Literally Unbelieveable. For some reason, most of the ill-informed/ill-grounded people on that site are conservatives. It might be cherry-picking, but he has a sibling site which showcases ill-informed/ill-grounded people from a variety of points of the political plane.

Just for the record, here is Poe’s law (Norman, not Edgar Allen) from Wiki:

I had never heard it before.

Consider an actual quote made by Sarah Palin at the WWII memorial rally: “Our vets have proven that they have not been timid, so we will not be timid in calling out any who would use our military, our vets, as pawns in a political game.” cite

How do you do political satire in a world where politicians say things like that?

They got Godwinwhooshed!

ETA: And about this:

Um… I saw that quote kicking around. Given that it was allegedly by Gohmert, it seemed perfectly plausible to me. You mean even that is a whoosh?

Stephen Colbert Fake Conservative Effect.

Poe’s Theory?

I have a lot of friends/family who often post “ZOMG look what Obummer is doing now!!!” stories, and are unsurprisingly caught by articles like the one in the OP.

I always respond with the same thing – “Next time you go to post something like this, click on the site’s Home link and take a look at some of the other headlines, just to see if anything is a little fishy”.

Unfortunately, it still doesn’t work – I had a SIL post that exact article yesterday. Apparently she sees nothing odd about headlines like “Selena Gomez Says Bieber Has ‘Tiny, Weird Penis’” and “Pope Benedict Comes Out as Gay”.

I had a Facebook friend of a friend post that same link as the OP. There were about 16 posts below it. I looked at the article and knew it was parody. I started to read the posts, and I figured that the people were making fun of it by acting like outraged, ignorant right wingers. Then I slowly realized that they were actually outraged, ignorant right wingers.

I guess making fun of parody is indistinguishable from being totally taken in by it.