@DaveGorman Brilliantly, I don't particularly disagree with you. I'm siding with the Devil because I like the challenge & hate being told I'm wrong (even though I think my original tweet you took issue with was a throwaway comment & it wouldn't kill me to just concede the point I was never really behind in the first place). Onwards then.

In regards to your wall example, it's under-described. It'd be deception on your part if you said (and intended them to believe) 'Look, I only have one leg!'. And if you were planning on revealing your second leg as a somewhat facetious joke, then it would be humorous. Your example is thus irrelevant as it is.

Also, I'm not entirely clear on what you mean by humorous implying intent; intent on whose part? I can say something which I consider neutral or even upsetting and someone can take it as a joke, a hilarious one at that. Where's the intent? I don't intend it to be funny, and they don't intend to find me funny, they just do find it funny. In the same way that when I watch your show, Genius, I don't intend to find it funny, I find that I'm disposed to find it funny (i.e. I'm forced to laugh by my [insert your theory of mind/body here]). My point being that something can be humorous and neither the person who has said something humorous nor the audience who find it funny have any sort of relevant intent towards the humour.

I'd also point out that the definition states "USUALLY taking the form of a fabrication of something fictitious or erroneous", not always (I can always claim this is an example of an unusual example of a hoax, not that I need to). Also, fabrication does not imply intent. I can unintentionally spin a fabrication. Say I'm at a pub talking to my friends about this wonderful event that transpired, I want to tell them the truth about what happened, but I get a bit carried away without realising and add in bits that are untrue.

And I've already shown that you can impose something without intending to, so your assertion to the contrary needs backing.

Your claim that the judge hasn't understood the medium seems very weak. Firstly, it's a public message and I find it very difficult to believe the court case went along and no-one told her (the judge) that it was sent TO someone (so a publicly accessible message that was directed at someone). How much more of the medium does she need to understand?

Imagine her (hypothetical) son, who is a bit of a Twitter addict, came across the message because, say he happened to be one of the people following Paul Chambers. Not being someone who kept up with the goings on of Paul's life and, as it happened, this was the first tweet of Paul's he'd read since he started following him, was a bit puzzled/startled by the message. If he finds it menacing/threatening are you going to simply suggest he doesn't understand Twitter? He (Paul) could be the kind of terrorist you find in a Chris Morris film for all Mr Judge's-Son knows.

Notice also that the judge qualified her statement about it being menacing, relativising it to current times. I.e. we live in times where bomb threats ARE carried out & anyone who happened to come across the message & didn't know any better (and was, perhaps, a little slow on the uptake) could therefore, with some justification (perhaps not much, but that's neither here nor there) take it as menacing.

The fact it wasn't meant to mislead & that anyone who isn't hypersensitive to the point of painfully stifling would realise it was, as you rightly say, a hyperbolic expression of anger is besides the point. The judge saw it as misleading & menacing (and I'm fairly confident she counts as a person), and presumably the police did too (otherwise they wouldn't have acted on it?). Like I said, I find your assertion that there was something to the medium (i.e. Twitter) which gives it special status hard to justify.

Anyway, the moral: some people found the original tweet humorous and some people (anyone who thought it showed menace) thought the message deceptive. A humorous deceit = hoax.
The fact that no-one was ACTUALLY fooled by it isn't strictly relevant, you can have a hoax that no-one falls for (i.e. a crap hoax -or one that hasn't been put into action).

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