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Comment by goodcanadian | Hacker News Reader

From memory, my understanding is that it did not obligate Pepsi because it was obviously* a joke.

*obvious to any reasonable person.

"Obvious to any reasonable person" is so vague. What happens when Poe's law is reached? Half the people will scream obvious while the other half scream obviously not! Also, the reasonable person would have to be raised and steeped in the culture. why would someone from another country, who doesn't understand US norms, be considered unreasonable? Pepsi is a large corporation that has been in posetion of USSR military gear (vague because I don't exactly remember what atm). Why wouldn't they be able to give a jet away? They are big enough, have possessed similar items, and run contests all the time. Seems legit to me (but I also haven't seen the ad).

Here's the ad in case you're interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdackF2H7Qc

Thanks! Definitely Poe's law. They show what seem like awards with point values and include a jet with a point value. The jet landing at school seems like a joke, but not the jet itself, IMHO. Sure it's an outlandish prize, but they gave it a point value along with others. Maybe the way the case was brought, it fell apart, but that's gotta be false advertizing.

I'd like to pose a serious question to you, which might run the risk of offending you--so fair warning, there.

I understand the fact that you believe your opinion is reasonable... It sounds like you also understand that the world broadly disagrees with you. A federal judge (Kimba Wood, no less!) disagreed with you... Since there was no appeal, I'd gather that the guy couldn't find funds to continue his suit--so his backers seem to have disagreed, too.

Is there a reason why you're more willing to believe in the idea that "All these people, including experienced legal minds, must be wrong", rather than "My own layman's intuition about the law must wrong"?

I'm asking because I genuinely don't understand why you'd want to continue backing your POV in the face of evidence to the contrary. I may have missed something, and I'm curious what your thought process looks like.

I know this just drags out the point--sorry for that--but your reasoning is based on a false statement. You reason that "Since there was no appeal...", but in point of fact, there was an appeal.

Consider this my pedantic contribution to a discussion about a pedantic case.

You got me there, yep... So that means a Federal appellate court also disagreed? Not sure what what stage of the appeal process he got to, so I dunno if that strengthens the argument or what.

There's a difference between what is legal and what is right. What is actually legal is muddled in stacks of overriding law and legal precedent that no "reasonable person" could every really know completely. I would bet you that more than 30% of the country wouldn't have seen that and thought "oh that's obviously a joke".

I am not an expert on U.S. law, so I can't answer in detail, but you better believe that formal standards to define that have been developed. I have heard of polling being done to determine what the average "reasonable person" thinks. Remember, this is not what any individual random person thinks, but what people in general are likely to think, so Poe's law doesn't really apply.

You don’t need to rely on your memory here. There’s an article with details at your fingertips!

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