Judge Says "Take It Down, No Joke."

Last Updated on: 13th September 2018, 03:04 pm

This frightens me. I would have an even clearer idea of how much it frightens me if the article was still up for people to see, but it still frightens me considering how many times I have screamed “It’s a joke! J o k e!” over the past couple of years.

There is a satirical blog-like site called Hammond Action News, and if you can’t figure out this is satire, you need your head examined. Apparently they put up a story claiming that there was a giraffe attack at the Global wildlife Sanctuary, and people fell for it, hook, line and sinker. They fell for it so bad that the sanctuary went to court against the guy who runs Hammond Action News demanding that he take the story down, and won. Yep, a judge agreed and made the order. Somehow, they persuaded the judge that people could be led to believe this was a real news site. Really? Only the kind of people who think the Onion is news would think this was actual news. I mean come on. Parents chaperoning a police ball? New census questions for the area asking how far you would drive for wine on a Sunday? Come the hell on.

The only place I agree is he took a picture that was copyrighted. Maybe he should have taken the photo down, but that’s about it.

The reason this frightens me is the number of people who can’t recognize satire is going up at an alarming rate. How many people will get sued for defamation when all they did was write satire?

I feel sorry for the poor Hammond Action News dude. He’s not getting any money from the site, he just wrote it for fun. Now he’s in court because some people can’t tell satire from reality.

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