A few weeks ago, a friend sent me
a link to the website Christwire.org, in particular an article on the
ostensibly right-wing site about “vajazzling…latest threat to young men in
college.” Vajazzling, the bizarre but apparently not untruthful practice of
decorating the pubic area with Swarovski crystals, is presented in the article
as an engagement of “whore antics” on the part of “college females” to tempt
their male counterparts and lure them into sexual activity.
The article, which you can find
here, seems almost too absurd to be real, but…shit…there are some crazy people
out there, so I was on the verge of writing off the site as only another
Westboro Baptist Church knockoff group of people (if somewhat less hateful)
when I figured a quick Google search might be worthwhile. It’s hard for me to
explain exactly what prompted the search, but the quick search bar was sitting
on top of my screen so I figured that there was no reason not to pull up some background information on these clearly bonkers Christwire people.
~
As some of you may have already
guessed (or known from the beginning), Christwire.org is not a “real” website.
It’s a parody of the websites of extreme, right wing groups. The writers (and,
I suspect, the defendants of the writers who often appear in the comments
section below) are merely Internet pranksters. Taking a step back and having a
second look at this sentiment: “if you have a college daughter, at least talk
to her and tell her to keep her antics to herself, not using her vajazzled
groin in attacking young men at fraternity socials or at late night study hall
meetings,” it seems clear that we’ve got a parody at work.
But that doesn’t really explain away
the angry comments below or my initial reaction to the article. It seemed
absurd, but somehow credible. I’ve excerpted one of the angry comments here in
its entirety because I think the length really helps illustrate how angry she is (keeping the original
syntax and typos, of course):
I’m sorry but how fucking close minded are you? Im a young woman and I
know 9 out of 10 of my friends do not want children ANYTIME soon, are you
retarded? you think woman are always the ones luring college boys in? what
about the thousands of times yearly young girls in college are taken advantage
of or even slipped drugs and raped, I’m not saying woman don’t try and make
themselves look attractive to the other sex, but you can have sex for the
reason to not have a child for the enjoyment of it as well, Im very sexually
active and I always look nice for the man I’m with, and I don’t plan on having
kids for 10 more years i have been on birth control for almost 3. So were the
fuck do you get off pulling this bullshit and letting people tolerate it? You
read this and actual believe it like young college woman everywhere are RUINING
college boys chance at life because they both have crazy hormones and want to
enjoy sex and enjoy life, it takes two to tango buddy, and you my friend sound
like a FOOL writing something as ignorant as this. Stupid stupid people get
with the fucking program.
So people buy Christwire—hook,
line, and sinker. They have no idea they’re being scammed. But I didn’t have
any idea either and I doubt that you would have had much better luck had I not
keyed you into the trick beforehand.
~
Unsurprisingly, it turns out that
Christwire.org is not an isolated phenomenon. The phenomenon is best explained
by the Internet wisdom that has become known as “Poe’s Law.” Essentially, Poe’s
Law states that it is impossible to differentiate between extremism and a
parody of extremism without an open indication of the intent of the author. One
Internet solution that has been offered by some is to include a sideways smile
[ :-) ] to “I’m only kidding” along with (unclearly) parodic or ironic statements.
But any admission of the parody as parody clearly butts into the very concept
of a parody itself. But then again, these parodies of extremism run into foul
territory by virtue of the fact that parody is, in some sense, supposed to be clearly a comic exaggeration. No one
sits down and watches Mel Brooks’s Blazing
Saddles and comes away from it thinking, “WOW. What a great, tried-and-true
example of the American Western!” The nature of extremism itself serves as the
thorn in the side of any extremist parody.
Not too long ago, there used to
be an informal publication on my college campus (by “informal” I mean that it
was unapproved and unfunded by the Media Board) called The Young Socialist. The broadsheet trumpeted an extreme socialist
viewpoint in the form of a long essay, often making jarring contradictions within
the essay itself. I still don’t know for sure whether or not the publication
was intended seriously or as a parody. It could
have been either…but the extremist attitude got in the way of both
interpretations. On one hand, the ideas were so extreme that they were hard to grapple with in an open,
intellectual way. On the other, the argument and its contradictions pointed parody
of such extreme ideas.
~
~
Correction: I just learned from a
New York Times article that Christwire.org is actually not intended to be a
parody of extremist groups…rather it’s meant to be a forum for exploring how
readily people believe the news and how they trust Internet sources. So if you’ve
been hoodwinked by the site as I have, then I guess that’s good news; that’s
what they were trying to do all along.
On the other hand, that sort of
throws my argument into some doubt. However, because I think some of the
discussion is worthwhile, I will leave up the post as it stands, despite its
factual errors and misconceptions. Additionally, I will leave the comment from
the woman up there because I think it represents exactly the struggle between
parody and the real thing that I’m concerned with…even if the intent of the
website differs from straight parody. Oh well…I gave it a try.
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