“State Church” Facebook Satire Account Proves Poe’s Law

A satire account called “The State Church” veers so close to the actual state church that it has managed to fool many Icelanders.

A newly created page called The State Church has been posting comedy gold lately, and doing so convincingly enough to make commenters uncertain if the page is serious or satire.

One of the more popular posts to come up has been the following status: “We want to remind our countrymen that Cream Puff Day is a Christian holiday. The spanking* refers to how Jesus was beaten, and the cream puff itself is the stone before Jesus’ tomb. By eating a cream puff we are helping Jesus from his grave.”

*(By Cream Puff Day tradition, you are supposed to administer a light spanking to whomever may provide you with cream puffs and say “Bollur! Bollur! Bollur!”)

Við viljum minna landsmenn á að bolludagurinn er kristin hátíð. Flengingarnar vísa til þess þegar Kristur var hýddur og…

Posted by Ríkiskirkjan on Monday, February 8, 2016

Another post comments on a recent news story that City Council wants to know how different religious groups finance their houses of worship, saying, “Why doesn’t the Muslim Society just finance themselves with a payoff from the government, like we do?”

Af hverju fjármagnar félag múslíma sig ekki bara með framlögum frá ríkinu, svona eins og við?

Posted by Ríkiskirkjan on Tuesday, February 9, 2016

While most Icelanders commenting on posts such as these see the obvious satirical nature of the site, a great many do not. Some Icelanders have questioned the scriptural knowledge of the page admins, while others have pedantically corrected the page owners on their contentions, such as the real origins of Cream Puff Day.

However, a look at their About page have made it fairly clear satire is at work. The State Church emphasise that the page is not that of the real and actual Facebook page of the National Church of Iceland, while listing amongst their Awards “banishment, witch hunts and more” and adding, “We’re only in it for the money”.