• Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    I’m not sure if The Onion has anymore purpose to serve. In the 90s, it was funny watching people read this newsletter and flipping the fuck out over obviously fake stories that let you know who around you was an idiot.

    These days? You can’t make an Onion article anymore. You could write a headline that states “Trump signs agreement to nuke Greenland”.

    Is that story an Onion story? Or are we seeing the same results on all the news outlets? Onion stories only make sense when the story is absurd and real life is mundane. When real life out-crazies the crazy stories, then Onion stories just come off as legitimate reporting. What else are we supposed to do with the Onion? If someone falls for it, you really can’t blame them at this point. We have a pedophile rapist president who can’t handle a small pond, but thinks he should be in charge of Lake ONTARIO.

    Sooooooo…why does the Onion still exist? Don’t get me wrong, I love them. I love that they took away Alex Jones platform. But, why do they still exist in it’s current form?

      • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        But that just normalizes the story and makes it more believable. In 1998 if you had told me that Bill Clinton had gathered a personal army to start a human trafficing ring, I’d have said that sounds made up. If you said it was an Onion article, I’d have laughed.

        In 2026 if you told me trump was doing the same, I’d say “Well, yeah. It’s called ICE.”

        All of the absurd things done in life in the modern day make The Onion impossible to be MORE absurd than real life. If Paul Rubens were still alive, you could convince me that PeeWee Herman would be our next president. Not Paul Rubens, specifically the character PeeWee Herman. ow imagine PeeWees Playhouse, and all the insanity, and imagine that’s just going to be the white house from now on.

        Except, I could actually see that happening. If Paul Rubens were still alive, that wouldn’t seem that far off coarse from the crazyness we have now. I’d actually welcome it, because PeeWees Playhouse was never hateful. That crazyness would be an upgrade from what we have right now. So if The Onion tried reporting that, I’d read the article not realizing it’s not real…because it IS within the radius of realism right now. You’d hear that news, and say “Yeah. Sure. That may as well happen.”

        Whereas if you told me PeeWee Herman (the character) would be the next president after Clinton, I’d just have to laugh at the absurdity. Today it seems just as real as anything else going on.

        • usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.mlOP
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          1 day ago

          The point of good satire is a bit more than to just be absurd, it’s more to point out something absurd about a specific thing. Not that everything on The Onion does that necessarily, to be fair