Why Satire?
My boyfriend, brother, and most of my friends and acquaintances really love satire. I, while I do find it sometimes amusing, am rather less fond of it. But I do find it fascinating that people write it. I’m not a psychologist, but I have gathered a few reasons why I think people write satire.
First of all, it’s fun. It is fun to ramble, and it often requires less research than a lot of more scientific analysis, because it’s not supposed to be grounded in reality. It’s make belief, but its make belief that shocks people. And shocking people is great fun for many writers. In fact, some write for the sole purpose of shocking people. Therefore it doesn’t matter if there are logical fallacies everywhere. They are supposed to be there, for the purpose of showing all the logical fallacies of people’s thought process.
And while it is fun to write, it also makes people do what the writer wants. It gets the emotions involved, and emotions are a powerful force for action. Often more powerful than logical, after all, usually the most logical thing to do is self-preservation. Which is all fine and dandy, except that it doesn’t exactly spur the most utopian society when everyone is out for themselves.
The final reason I’ve seen for satire is that it is so ridiculous that it is hard to come up with a good comeback. Most post online have some sort of angry response to certain political views, but when something is so exaggerated as satire, there just simply isn’t a good response. Except maybe more satire.
Anyway, as stated earlier I’m not a psychologist, and I haven’t done any research into the subject. It’s simply just my observations that I’ve seen while both reading satire, and listening to others talk about it.
