Thursday 4 December 2014

Beyond the UKIP Event Horizon

Poe's Law states that in the end there is no functional difference between an extreme view and a parody of that view.

And so UKIP took up Poe's Law, embraced it, excelled it and made it its own. A branch criticised a poll for being biased because it was outside a mosque (which was actually Westminster Cathedral*). So no wonder they had to warn their followers that the Trumpton UKIP account was a parody. For those outside the confines of our green and pleasant land, I should explain that Trumptonshire is a county in Middle England populated entirely by white people, with an agrarian lifestyle, where posh people are all in charge. Pretty much, some UKIP supporters might think, what they are voting for.

But they couldn't stop there. Accounts claiming the BBC's Nick Robinson is a UKIP supporter, a Twitter account for UKIP in Narnia. UKIP weather.... there's no end to the different ways of satirising UKIP - or at least what some people think UKIP's views are - on Twitter. 

Of course, eventually you reach the UKIP Critical Mass. At this point, the sheer amount of parody is so great that it collapses in under the mass of its own absurdity. The paraphernalia of UKIPia - fivers, bulldogs, pints of ale, foreign plumbers - fall into the black hole, crashing past the UKIP event Horizon beyond which sense falls in without every being seen again, and  you no longer know what is meant to be true anymore.

Crashing into the UKIP Singularity


Eileen's Special Form of Poe's Law states that, when the thing parodied is so drowned out by the parodies that you can't remember what the point is, you pass through the singularity to a parallel universe where the parodies become the real thing and vice versa. So you could get to the state where a bunch of ex-public school boys and Tory politicians are claiming that they're the outsiders shaking up the political system, throwing the old self-serving set-up out and inventing a new politics for ordinary people.

And, of course, that would just be a parody.

*Though to be fair a lot of Poles are Catholic. So maybe they knew what they were doing.

4 comments :

  1. Here in Barsetshire, I'm going to vote for the Archdeacon, Dr Grantly. A UKIP man, if ever I saw one.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dr Grantly - not connected to the late Bishop Spacely-Trellis by any chance ?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You're not thinking of Bishop Proudie, are you?

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