Board 8 > Did you take A Modest Proposal seriously in high school?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Or whenever you read it. If you read it.

I saw a thread on another board from a guy who was blatantly satirizing the attitudes of some of the people in the game with an over-the-top take, and everyone there was taking him literally and thinking he was the biggest idiot/troll they'd ever seen. It made me remember when my 12th grade teacher had us read A Modest Proposal, and everyone in the class took it at face value and thought it was incredibly awful, and who the hell did this Johnathan Swift guy think he was, talking about eating babies?

The difference, of course, is that we naive teenagers had never seen a work of literature that had been written as blatant satire, and didn't consider for a second that our teacher would give us a work that was meant to imply the exact opposite of what it said. Whereas people are sarcastic all the time on the internet. But I still wonder how many other people had that moment where they went, "Wait, what? It's not real?"

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We didn't read it in high school but I think I already had heard of it as a famous work of satire. And high school lit did tend to beat the themes of whatever we read into our heads as far as I remember.

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Idk not familiar with the work at all

All I had to do to ace AP English was make everything about women and religion. Teacher ate it up

all I remember from high school is The Great Gatsby and a book about a journalist in Tiananmen Square

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I remember being impressed that people could be that blatantly hyperbolic in the way back times.

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We had to read it then write our own satirical story.

Mine was about trying to find Weapons of Mass Destruction on the moon.

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i don't remember ever not viewing it as satirical, but it may have been framed that way already
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No, and I remember being extremely confused that anyone in my class did.

People must have thought I was a psychopath if they happened to look over and see me smiling to myself as I read it.

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i didn't read it at the time, but i knew what satire was

ironically, as i've gotten older i've been less kind towards (anonymous) satire. there have been multiple people (comedians, internet posters, etc) i was so sure were being satirical, but ended up being straight up actual nazis.

satire doesn't work on the anonymous internet. it works when you know and have a relationship with someone- you have a baseline of knowledge about what they actually believe, so you can understand the humor in context

i thought for sure /r/the_donald was satirical for a long time, but then Charlottesville happened. the subreddit/forum was eventually banned for hate speech and organizing to kill police. ten years ago i thought everyone on 4chan was just like me and only horsing around. it's been proven that isn't the case

long story short, don't be unhappy when anonymous people won't take your anonymous shit the way you want them to!

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My high school curriculum did a really good job explaining the context surrounding A Modest Proposal. So my main takeaway was:

pjbasis posted...

I remember being impressed that people could be that blatantly hyperbolic in the way back times.

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@banananor

Great post. I've definitely felt that "Oh my God, they were actually serious" feeling, and it sucks.

I think a big reason why it was so easy to write off crazy shit as satire/trolling was because of how powerless these people were (or at least seemed to be). The internet and "real life" were still very distinct until... like, five or six years ago. So in that context, it was just an unwritten rule that 4chan shitposters, Redditors and the like were losers who couldn't affect anything. When the stakes are that low, it's easy to be like - "They must be trolling. And if they're not, well, they're just the peanut gallery."

Then the second half of the 2010s happened. >_>

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banananor posted...

ironically, as i've gotten older i've been less kind towards (anonymous) satire. there have been multiple people (comedians, internet posters, etc) i was so sure were being satirical, but ended up being straight up actual nazis.

to be fair, i'm not sure this should be considered ironic at this point - reality has kind of destroyed satire pretty hard as real people trend toward the cartoonishly evil
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Also the Sealab 2021 scene.

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We didn't read it in high school. We read it in college, but I already knew it was a work of satire so the effect was kinda spoiled.

But also what banananor said.
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I don't think I had never even heard of it until first year of university, where we read it as part of a module called "the literature of laughter" - so no, I didn't take it seriously basically by default.
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no and i'm confused by anyone who did take it seriousy.
not sure if i knew exactly what satire was at the time but i knew sarcasm and that was dripping out of it.


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We read it in junior high (roughly middle school). The teacher explained the concept of satire, and then had us read it.

It wasn't that any of us didn't know what sarcasm was, it was that we didn't expect it from this medium.

Granted, I was in high school before the internet was so ubiquitous. Younger readers probably have a different attitude.

banananor posted...

long story short, don't be unhappy when anonymous people won't take your anonymous shit the way you want them to!

If you're referring to the post I mentioned at the top that sparked this thread, it seemed really freaking obvious to me, even given that the user does have a history of sometimes trolling and that I tend to be completely clueless 90% of the time.

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Uglyface2 posted...

We read it in junior high (roughly middle school). The teacher explained the concept of satire, and then had us read it.

Mm, yeah, I'm pretty sure our teacher deliberately did not give us any lead-in.

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You know at first I thought I didn't read it but now that I see what it is I'm almost positive I did unless there is another famous satirical work that would be read in an English class.

Now as for did me and my class take it seriously? Probably not. Tbh today i think id have a harder time telling (although its so ober the top it probably doesn't matter) since things like the internet have made it so I legitimately believe more people who share outlandish and crazy views exist.

never heard of this

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MegamanX posted...

never heard of this

see, because of the topic, I can't tell whether this post is satire
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I think I did take it seriously because for some reason I didn't think people in the past were intelligent. Like, they were some pathetically sad version of humanity that didnt know how to use their brains well enough to make things like computers or pencils with erasers on them.

I guess they got me good

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I wasn't confident that it was satire until fairly late (I think when he's like, "but don't tell me there are better ways, like <list of actual ideas>.")
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Never heard of it. (not satirical)

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