It's the Era of That's Not Funny: "After a fake interview of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez went viral, its maker said it was satire."

WaPo summons outrage for something that, to me, looks like an old comedy form — editing in new questions to make old answers ridiculous:



At Facebook, there's now an "Update: Yes, this is satire created from excerpts of the viral Firing Line interview with Ocasio-Cortez." But, come on, you have to be dumb not to see that Allie's questions were recorded separately and video of Ocasio-Cortez was selected to make her look ridiculous. Or maybe not so dumb, but just firmly embedded in what I've been calling The Era of That's Not Funny. It's especially "not funny" because the target of ridicule is a young woman. If the same technique had been used on Donald Trump or some other powerful, old, white guy, I suspect WaPo would have celebrated it. I can imagine it being played on "The Daily Show" or Stephen Colbert or John Oliver's show, and no one at WaPo would have cried fake news on it.

From WaPo:

Misinformation is not completely outlawed according to the [Facebook's] community guidelines — an issue that has caused plenty of discussion recently — and neither, of course, is satire, but the video appeared to fall into a confusing gap between the two before it was labeled....

And to many skeptical eyes, the video was obviously fishy and staged. But it appeared to be taken seriously after it was shared on some conservative-leaning pages on Facebook, and was viewed about 1 million times before the company posted the clarification to its caption.

If people become dependent on labeling, they'll lose the mental tools they need to perceive humor (and fakeness) on their own. Not only are we losing the joys of humor — as outraged demands for warning labels succeed — we are getting primed to become witless consumers of propaganda.

“If you have to do research to figure out that a video that blatantly absurd is satirical, you shouldn’t be on the Internet,” [Allie] Stuckey wrote....

The Verge’s Adi Robertson noted that “while the clips aren’t spliced all that realistically, it’s not clear that this is intentional. Without the disclaimer, it’s indistinguishable from an awkward attempt at smearing a political opponent.”...