THE FOLLOWING POST IS SATIRICAL (SPOILERS!)

ITEM: Facebook has started adding a “satire” tag to articles originating from satirical news sites like The Onion.

The tag appears in front of the headline, and only applies to stories that appear in the “related stories” link once you “like” a given article on Facebook.

Which I only mention because a lot of people seem to be complaining about this. And I don't really know why.

The complaints are generally along the lines of “Facebook thinks we’re so stupid we don’t know satire when we see it!”

On the other hand, they also mention Literally Unbelievable, the site that proves that yes, some people are that stupid. Or at least lazy enough to not bother checking a story’s source.

My Facebook feed is filled with examples of people passing on fake news or memes under the assumption that they’re both real and accurate. Some people may think that’s harmless to fool the ignorant and gullible. I’m not really sure about that.

So I don’t see what the objection is to tagging articles as satire.

I certainly don’t see how doing so would “ruin” it. I suppose it depends on yr motivation for sharing Onion articles. Maybe you just want to share a funny article. Maybe you want to prank yr friends, in which case the tag would be inconvenient. I’ve done both. But I don’t mind giving up the latter, if only because no one fell for them (which is because most of them don’t read any of the stuff I post anyway).

Whatever. My only concern would be Facebook’s criteria for labeling something “satire”. Otherwise, I have no problem with it.

Now if they could only come up with a “Batshit” tag. THAT would be handy.

Won’t get fooled again,

This is dF

THE LOWEST DIFFICULTY SETTING (POLICE STORY EDITION)

I don’t want to spend much more time on the Ferguson situation. But I thought this was worth passing on, and it applies well outside of Ferguson.

One of the biggest disconnects in cases like this is the relationship between civilians and the police. I’ve seen plenty of comments from friends (in this case, all white middle-class people) defend the Ferguson police on general law-and-order principles, and don’t see why the local African-American community automatically blame the police and assume it’s a racist killing.

The answer is this: people who are white and/or reasonably affluent don’t have the same experiences or interactions with the police than people who are non-white and/or poor.

This Twitter thread from Gene Demby of NPR’s Code Switch gives a good explanation of this reality schism. I recommend reading the whole thing.

John Scalzi has covered similar ground in his essay “Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is” (which includes racial minorities, women and LGBTs), which has already been borne out by at least one scientific study.

It’s all about experience, and understanding that not all experiences are universal. To paraphrase Lemony Snicket, if the African-American community in Ferguson feels wronged and angry, it doesn’t help if yr response is telling them they shouldn’t feel that way. It's even less helpful when you explain that they shouldn't feel that way because YOU certainly don't, so why should they?

How do you think it feels,

This is dF