Atomic Nerds

In something of a companion to my earlier post regarding people who seem to have deliberately annoying people confused with some sort of high-order puppetmastery, a follow up to l’affaire Heyl.

It seems Sir Eric has been visiting the comment sections of blogs bitching him out and smirking that people simply don’t understand that his column was satire. Ignorant redneck broads that we are. Also that the job of a writer is to get a reaction, which… see the earlier post for what I think of that. Titling his column “Penis Penis Fargo” and spending the rest writing about Japanese flower arrangement would have drawn comment too, but that wouldn’t have made it good writing.

That he evidently meant to be ironic and edgy in some sort of vaguely satiric fashion wasn’t difficult to see; the reason I didn’t treat it as satire was that it was a complete and utter failure as a satire and simply read as a straight misogynist rant instead.

In order for a satire to work as a satire, you need a couple of ingredients. First, you need either a very clearly defined and well-known target, or you need to share a number of specific assumptions with your audience. You don’t actually need to be very clear that you are a satirist- some of the very best are very frequently confused with the real deal, simply because they’re living that far out in Poe’s Law territory. Christwire is a great example of this breed- it takes a good long look at their site to see their tongue tucked over in their cheek, and Christwire stories are frequently discussed and blogged as though they were serious. Their satire works because they’re only a bubble or two off of the least self-aware and most hardline American Christian fundamentalists, and such people have a very well-defined image that gets reinforced every day. (You’ll also note they also don’t need to go round in the comments sections of fooled blogs and make fun of people for not getting the joke.)

In order for Heyl’s piece to be a satire, the target of the satire would have to at least be broadly identifiable. As it is, it starts off as a fairly straight (if questionably motivated) piece of reporting on the NRA convention and its gender balance or lack thereof, then continues into a brief mention of some of the things they’re doing as an organization to attract more female membership- which are fairly bland and common-sense things at that. The “satire” part- all jokes based on grossly misogynist stereotypes- is next.

The problem is that there is zero hint who is meant to be satirized. Unless you assume that the reason the NRA convention has a skewed gender ratio because the NRA is stuffed to the gills with laughable knuckle-dragging sexists- and such is certainly not shown by any of the dry facts cited, or by the NRA spokesman’s statement-there is no satire, and it simply stands as “women are so silly and stupid, and the NRA thinks they can court them like adults, ha ha!”.

Of course, this is all fairly academic exercise, because I’m pretty sure Eric Heyl didn’t fail at satire on that advanced a level of premeditation. I’m pretty sure that, like the people who are fundamentally confused about what getting any sort of reaction means as to their mad writing skills (in whose company he also seems to be), he genuinely believes that “just kidding” absolves you of any responsibility for what you say or write, no matter how stupid, offensive, or both.

Posted Arms races, my furious genitals, Ranting, run that one by me again... |