[chrisseaton]

> Scott Adams claims that about 30% of people in a society just do not get humour / satire

Satire, snark, and sarcasm have to be least effective way you could possibly choose to communicate. You are absolutely begging to be misunderstood and misquoted, either genuinely or maliciously, and then it's nigh on impossible to explain yourself as all your excuses just sound like like it-was-a-prank-bro.

Another huge problem is that satire is often used as cover for telling not-quite-truths. I listen to satirical radio programmes (we have a lot of those in the UK) and sometimes I think they're really bending the truth quite a bit to get the joke and their criticism isn't really fair. That'd be fine if these people weren't simultaneously actual political activists who the next night are saying they're making genuine political arguments, and if people didn't think it's-funny-because-it's-true. I'm pretty sure some of them do satire just to get away with attacking without having to back any of it up, and so they can absolve themselves from responsibility when challenged.

Quite often, I think really I'm just listening to some nasty bullies.

All-in-all, I think satire is a bit toxic for everyone involved.

[andybak]

Aren't all the reasons you state, reasons why satire, snark, and sarcasm are actually incredibly effective ways to communicate?

Not many people have the fortitude to resist their charms or the self-awareness to police themselves indefinitely. I know I don't.

[notacoward]

Were you intending to demonstrate self-satire, or was it an accident? _A Modest Proposal_ alone should make the case for the effectiveness of satire, which is closely related to the even more time-honored reductio ad absurdum. The problem is that there's a lot of bad satire, and false satire, but that's a problem with almost every form of speech/writing that's not completely dry, flat, and colorless. It's true of analogy, allegory, metaphor, hyperbole (like yours when you say "least effective way possible"), poetry, etc. They're all abused. They're all prone to misunderstanding. Effective communication is hard. Don't mistake personal preference for a general rule, or present it as such.

[chrisseaton]

I think satire is different from just being ineffective, in that it actively opens yourself up to malicious mis-interpretation. Its failure mode isn't just your audience being confused or missing the point.

Like the comedian in the UK who said she wanted to throw battery acid at politicians. It was (probably 90%) satire. But when challenged if she said she thought you should throw battery acid all she can say is yes with a weak-sounding defence of 'but it was just a prank.'

[leftyted]

Aren't you proving his point?

Scott Adams became world famous writing a cartoon full of snark and satire. These are perfectly valid ways of communicating and in fact they make up a significant chunk of human communication.

Reading comments like yours is somewhat bewildering to me. It seems like you're pushing philistinism as a virtue.

[ravenstine]

This has not been my experience. People, especially the ones these days, are bored to tears by facts. They don't care.

However, by pointing out absurdity in a way that invokes a positive state of being, welled crafted humor can not only get the point across more efficiently but propagate more effectively if people choose to retell the joke.

[INGELRII]

Satire is effective influencing method. The additional benefit is avoiding the requirement for reliability and responsibility because it's not real journalism.

In the US The Daily Show established satirical ha-ha as effective method to deliver news and discuss politics for younger generations.

It started as pure satire but turned into real institution people used to learn about the world. The spinoffs like The Colbert Report and related shows from people who worked in the show is impressive: The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn , Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, The Break with Michelle Wolf and Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj all continue using similar framework.

In the right the effective satire seems to come mainly in the form of internet trolls. It's more hostile, less intellectual. It's for people who see hostility as funny. Despite being very crude, this kind of satire can have huge influence.

[raverbashing]

True, it's easy being cynical at everything and treating everything with irony and contempt (which would be most your latter example)

I think the satirical shows do a better job of being more subtle and not just being cynical at everything