The message was posted during a debate on creationism, where a previous poster had remarked to another user: "Good thing you included the winky.
[4] The reply by Nathan Poe read:[1] Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is utterly impossible to parody a Creationist in such a way that someone won't mistake for the genuine article.The original statement of Poe's law referred specifically to creationism, but it has since been generalized to apply to any kind of fundamentalism or extremism.
[7] Some abuse the law by publishing extremism or defamation without a smiley or other indication of satire, and if there is too much criticism towards it, reply that it was only an irony.
As early as 1983, Jerry Schwarz, in a post on Usenet, wrote: Avoid sarcasm and facetious remarks.
The article gave examples of cases such as 4chan with the usage of the OK gesture as a white power symbol and the Trump administration where there were deliberate ambiguities over whether something was serious or intended as a parody, where people were using Poe's law as "a refuge" to camouflage beliefs that would otherwise be considered unacceptable.