A funny thing happened on the internet.
People started joking about how Tide Pods, those vibrant, squishy laundry detergent capsules, looked almost good enough to eat. In 2015, The Onion did a clear parody piece called So Help Me God, I’m Going To Eat One Of Those Multicolored Detergent Pods.
Memes circulated, suggesting the pods were some kind of forbidden fruit, and YouTube creators played along by cooking up "recipes."
It all seemed like good, harmless fun—until it wasn't. As the challenge went viral, children, teenagers, and adults with dementia began actually ingesting these dangerous, toxic pods, causing a public health concern.
The line between pointing out how dumb something was, and that very thing becoming exponentially more dangerous—that Rubicon had been crossed.
Today, let’s talk specifically about Poe’s Law: without the author clearly letting you know, it’s incredibly difficult to differentiate between extremism and a parody of extremism.
Why? Because the actual views and …
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