I had a conversation about satire recently and found its most interesting trait to be the divergent paths to understanding and misunderstanding its intent. A caricature can be taken as criticism or instead as CrItiCiSm.

For example, Homelander can be perceived as the monster that he is and a trump allegory. In this case, the intended message is that trump is a monster. However, homelander is such an over-the-top monster that it can also be perceived as mocking the “over-the-top” criticism of trump while fully acknowledging that it is a satire. The former is the intended message but the latter is a reasonable take for someone who doesn’t see trump as a monster. They might say that the critique is meant to be so ridiculous that it exemplifies the calls for action against an “innocent man.” “He’s not that monstrous, they must mean something else.”

South park’s manbearpig, personally, is a more interesting example. Before it was retconned, it was Al Gore‘s reputation-ruining hunt for an imaginary creature, manbearpig, which served as an allegory for his fight against, what Stone and Parker believed to be, the fictional premise of global warming. I perceived it not as criticism of Al Gore but as CrItICIsM, given that global warming factually exists. The intended message was that Al Gore ruined his reputation on a snipe hunt while I took it as the republican view of the situation being so ridiculously discordant with reality that this was their perception. In a way, that was right.

All of this is to say, satire can be difficult to understand even when it is understood to be satire, let alone when it’s taken literally. Poe’s law isn’t just an issue on the internet. For those of you scanning through and looking to pick a fight because you’ve misunderstood, yes trump is a monster, yes global warming is real, yes you should work on your reading comprehension if those were your criticisms.