Thanks for giving the follow up B.E. That’s great to hear your FB page got some good discussion out of it. Further supports what I replied to Steve about my REAL points spreading better via a provocative post vs. a straight one. Hopefully new people to the blog stay intrigued long enough to see and read the gajillion other posts on this blog that would clearly show what’s satire and what’s real. 🙂

There was one other thing I thought of. Just about all of the comments from people who thought I was serious expressed sentiments that I REALLY believe. On Twitter, Facebook and this blog, people were making my REAL points for me. That is another reason and power of satire. The discussions and arguments against the satirical blog post end up spreading the REAL message much better than if I were to have written a straight article. The provocative nature of the post ignites the passion and fire in readers to speak out against the inanity of my post. I don’t think there would have been as much commentary by people across my social networks If these were “regular” posts. So you could argue that it actually it ends up being THE best vehicle for making my point.

Hey Steve, thanks for the comment. You make a good point. I have to consider that part of it could be how I write it. But this is my response to that.

First, there were also a lot of people who KNEW these posts were satirical, and either commented as much publicly, or emailed me privately.

Second, even the most skilled and well-known makers of satire still get replies from people who think their content is real. Scoopertino.com is a popular satirical blog about all things Apple. They still get comments from people who think it’s real. When “The Onion” first started out, they got replies and letters from people who thought their jokes were real. The popular YouTuber and filmmaker Julian Smith, about whom I wrote my blog post “The Power of Satire in Filmmaking” (http://bit.ly/stx5oG) got a lot of flack from people who thought his “Pre-Blessed Food” sketch was real. This was despite the fact his videos get millions of views and you’d think people would know by now that’s the kind of stuff he does. That video was as silly as you can get, and there were still a lot of people complaining about him saying you can “pre-bless” food. He even had to write a follow up blog post about it.

So, no matter how clever the comedy, no matter how many clues I include, there are still going to be a percentage of people who think it’s real.

Lastly, to be frank, part of the fun of satire is the commentary from those who think it’s real.

With all that said, I will also continue to write straight-forward posts and commentaries as well. But I gotta have some fun every now and then. 🙂