Social Justice, what now?

Satire is an interesting beast.

When The Colbert Report was on most people understood that it was all satire. It aired on Comedy Central, it was a joke.

But sometimes, it would say something that people honestly thought was a valid point. The most specific example I can think of is the concept of color blindness. I’m not going to get into why color blindness is bad, if you don’t know I’d check out MTV’s video on the matter. Point being, if you aren’t in on the joke, satire can support what you are making fun of.

I’ve seen this everywhere this week, (maybe this year) and no platform is excused. As movements and societal trends grow the misuse of those successful tactics also grows. Thus more satire is often created. Which cycles back to the problem of satire supporting what you don’t want.

This phenomenon has a name: Poe’s law. Which follows, “without a clear indicator of the author’s intent, parodies of extreme views will be mistaken by some readers as sincere expressions of the parodied views.”

It was created when someone wrote an article and then added a winky face at the end. A commenter replied good thing for that smiley otherwise you’d never know you were joking. When watching the Colbert Report you at least had his tone as an indicator. But when you read this article I can’t control what tone your voice uses. Thus an actual problem with the internet.

It’s not that social justice has run amok and therefore should be tossed out. It isn’t that people have become too politically correct, or too easily offended. It’s that we all learn at different rates and times. My experience of working daily with activism means I’ll see things that it could take months for you to see, or years for someone who doesn’t spend their life on the internet. This isn’t to fault anyone. Merely point out that we aren’t more divided than ever, we are more interconnected than ever.

“A wise man knows that he knows nothing.” I heard that as a kid, and as I think about the internet and interconnectivity, the age of the quote stands out. Socrates was a philosopher from BC times. Just consider for a moment how nearing timeless some philosophy is.

If we want progress we have to build on the past. But, each person has to learn from a starting point of zero. So jokes and methodology do become misused or misunderstood. Maybe we think that a minority group is just now speaking out, when in reality they have been fighting the whole time. Far too often nothing gets done because we are missing the frame of reference. But we don’t have to know everything if we can simply admit we don’t, and look for the context.

#socialjustice #satire #philosophy