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A stupid joke resulting in a silly news cycle

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Re: A stupid joke resulting in a silly news cycle

#41

Post by hotpotamus »

pvg wrote: post #20

The crucial detail that is a little buried in the piece is that the original 'explanation' was posted in /r/ProgrammerHumor so it said right on the tin it was a joke. But the (seemingly clearly intended as a joke) details temporarily nerd-sniped a lot of people's senses of humor right out of their brains. The HN discussion discussion from back then is still fun reading with a number of commenters very invested in the…

In defense of the gullible, I have a hard time telling the difference between reality and a prank these days too.

Re: A stupid joke resulting in a silly news cycle

#42

Post by pessimizer »

chrisseaton wrote: post #22
bastawhiz wrote: post #14

This has been a problem for a long time. Almost ten years ago, I maintained a joke Twitter inspired by the Atherton police blotter: @mvpoliceblotter. It was just silly nonsense, until one of the tweets about someone walking into and breaking a store window while watching YouTube on their Google Glass got retweeted by an ABC 7 reporter. SJ Mercury wrote a story (later retracted). It got a ton of attention, even though…

Do you feel responsible for generating misinformation? You say there was zero evidence behind the article, but the evidence was your Tweet, and it was really your Tweet that had zero evidence behind it.

A tweet isn't any more evidence than a person you don't know and have never met spraypainting the same thing on a wall.

The problem is how news outlets that care so little about the quality of the information they present continue to exist.

Re: A stupid joke resulting in a silly news cycle

#43

Post by derekp7 »

chrisseaton wrote: post #30
bastawhiz wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely not. Should The Onion be considered fake news? It was a parody account, which was labeled as such. Journalists who can't even be bothered to tap through to the profile don't get my sympathy.

I kind of think that in the mess we’re in ‘it was just a prank bro’ doesn’t cut it any more as an excuse for something that causes harm. But maybe that’s extremist of me.

Yes, it is extremely extremist to call for canceling all works of fiction.

Re: A stupid joke resulting in a silly news cycle

#44

Post by chrisseaton »

bastawhiz wrote: post #37
chrisseaton wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kind of think that in the mess we’re in ‘it was just a prank bro’ doesn’t cut it any more as an excuse for something that causes harm. But maybe that’s extremist of me.

So satire cannot exist? Because anyone who might accidentally mistake it for truth can be "harmed" Journalists have a big megaphone. Their job is to amplify truth. If I'm making jokes and being clear about my intentions, but a lazy journalist sees my content as easy clickbait, that's my fault? What I was tweeting was never "news" let alone "fake news". It was never wrapped deceptively as truth. It wasn't a prank. Som…

Why add entropy to the situation? We know people mid-understand satire and sarcasm.

I do kind of feel much satire is deliberately harmful - people use it to say things and then hide behind ‘but I was just joking’ having already pushed the message out.

Re: A stupid joke resulting in a silly news cycle

#45

Post by fleshdaddy »

chrisseaton wrote: post #30
bastawhiz wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely not. Should The Onion be considered fake news? It was a parody account, which was labeled as such. Journalists who can't even be bothered to tap through to the profile don't get my sympathy.

I kind of think that in the mess we’re in ‘it was just a prank bro’ doesn’t cut it any more as an excuse for something that causes harm. But maybe that’s extremist of me.

I mean are you suggesting no more jokes, parodies, or satire lest a journalist take it seriously? That would practically require a complete self censor on all fiction. I could just easily tweet a blurb from a Sci-fi novel and risk someone, somewhere, misinterpreting it. Also a prank has the intent to mislead which the poster didn’t. Don’t mean to sound inflammatory but the humorless world that would be sounds a lot more miserable than living in the mess it seeks to remedy.

Re: A stupid joke resulting in a silly news cycle

#46

Post by inwit »

mjard wrote: post #29
JadeNB wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author seems explicitly to indicate that they're not chiding anyone, nor defending themselves: > It's not meant to bash news outlets over journalistic integrity. The internet is a difficult thing to document. It's not meant to justify my joke. If you don't think it was funny... OK. Depending on the day I'm sure I'd agree with you.

It's self congratulatory not defensive. If I claim that I am not chiding you, but then write an entire blog post on how I was able to pull one over on you, one of those should speak louder than the other.

Think what we're all learning here is that you have neither a sense of humour nor a sense of perspective. What actual bad thing happened here? It's just a fun whimsical incident. I actually think it says more about your self esteem than anything else that you read this as self-congratulatory

Re: A stupid joke resulting in a silly news cycle

#47

Post by rascul »

renewiltord wrote: post #32
chrisseaton wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you feel responsible for generating misinformation? You say there was zero evidence behind the article, but the evidence was your Tweet, and it was really your Tweet that had zero evidence behind it.

Hmm, it is true. There are many such people spreading misinformation about chickens crossing roads. They have very little evidence for their assertions about said chickens but they state these things with great confidence! Twitter should crack down on this misinformation.

> There are many such people spreading misinformation about chickens crossing roads.

Do these people explain why the chickens were crossing the roads?

Re: A stupid joke resulting in a silly news cycle

#48

Post by pvg »

hotpotamus wrote: post #41
pvg wrote: post #20

The crucial detail that is a little buried in the piece is that the original 'explanation' was posted in /r/ProgrammerHumor so it said right on the tin it was a joke. But the (seemingly clearly intended as a joke) details temporarily nerd-sniped a lot of people's senses of humor right out of their brains. The HN discussion discussion from back then is still fun reading with a number of commenters very invested in the…

In defense of the gullible, I have a hard time telling the difference between reality and a prank these days too.

I think misreading something like this is a perfectly understandable thing. It's definitely a 'had me going there for a second' type of joke. The unusual thing about this one is its spread and the (seemingly ongoing!) insistence by some of the taken that it was diabolically difficult to tell it was a joke. I suppose the latter contributed to the former.

Re: A stupid joke resulting in a silly news cycle

#49

Post by pessimizer »

mjard wrote: post #36
pvg wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What lesson is the author supposed to learn here? Don't post jokes on a joke subreddit?

Jokes on the internet are great when people are in on them. Positioning yourself as someone that has inside information when it's false falls closer to "it was just a prank bro". The author should be able to say whatever they want, though the ability doesn't make the action not shitty.

No jokes are great when people are in on them. That's why the punchline doesn't come first.

Re: A stupid joke resulting in a silly news cycle

#50

Post by mdoms »

pvg wrote: post #40
mdoms wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think something presented as fact in the comments to a joke is always going to be taken as a joke. Lots of people post their (supposedly) factual war stories in the comments of The Daily WTF and similar websites.

Right but this is called 'programmer humor'. Plus it's obviously not serious if you think about it for more than 60 seconds.

I just took a very quick look at the subreddit (absolutely awful stuff BTW, who finds this crap funny?) and already found 2 instances of people sharing "real" stories in the comments to joke posts. Should both of these be taken as jokes? They are not presented as such.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/u0elnq/com...

> I completely forget the example problem we were doing, but back when I was learning C, we were given sample code to fix. Everything was perfectly formatted, and the program ran without issue like be 99% of the time, but every once in a while, it’d give a totally incorrect value, or throw an error, and it was to teach us all about concurrency and race conditions and how even when we know we have done everything right, there might be something wrong that takes a deeper understanding to idntify. My professor was awesome.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/u0ibli/com...

> In my old team, every line above 400 was considered an error. 2000 lines was a cause to put the development on hold until the end of refactoring.

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