Had no idea Ben Collins had become an executive at whatever this thing is. He was an excellent reporter and a guy who really, really understands how the internet works and how communities flourish or go toxic. He reported a lot about Kiwi Farms and Cloudflare's response to public pressure.
I'm not sure I'd call it good reporting to investigate this case and not look into Doxbin.
There has been no evidence that Kiwifarms users have coordinated harassment towards keffals; however, the website that actually coordinated the harassment gets absolutely no mention.
When the reporter brings up the Uber hack, he's insinuating that this was done by Kiwifarms, but the receipts were actually posted on Doxbin. Doxbin also goes much much further than Kiwifarms, getting addresses,bank details, and employment history of anyone related to the target. They will work together to contact hotels and employers to get the information they want. Doxbin actually does act the way the media thinks that kiwifarms act.
I can understand Keffals not speaking about Doxbin as she legitimately fears them according to leaked messages to Destiny, but it's the media's responsibility to actually understand what's going on.
It's insane that people like Ben Collins constantly use Kiwifarms as a shield for Doxbin.
The company was created just a couple of weeks ago with the purpose of buying The Onion. It doesn’t sound like the CEO responsibilities will take a lot of time away from his other work.
That's a lot of accusation. I've not heard of him before but you can view a list of his articles on NBC. He does seem left-leaning for the US, doesn't look that extremist to me. HNers can decide for themselves: https://www.nbcnews.com/author/ben-collins-ncpn858396
At the risk of engaging in what I'm sure will be a very even-headed and reasonable dialogue, I can think of a handful of things that the moderate American left would do / agree on that the more extreme elements would not. And just because you have to bend over backwards to avoid getting shadowbanned or flagged for even mentioning any of these, I'm not telling anyone where I stand on any of these things. Some I agree with, some I don't. It doesn't matter.
1. Israel has a right to exist and should not just pack up and leave Gaza.
2. Children who are not old enough to get a loan are also not old enough to consent to surgery or hormone blockers.
3. If you transition from male to female you should not be allowed to participate in women's sports.
4. Women's pro athletes getting paid a fraction of what male pro athletes do is a function of supply and demand and is not inherently sexist.
5. There are root causes to the disproportionate incarceration of African Americans that do not boil down to "the system is racist."
6. Taxes should be used to raise revenue in order to provide social and other government services, not as punishment.
None of those positions are inherently conservative and all of them could be held by a popular mainstream Democratic member of Congress or Presidential candidate. All of them (or any of them if voiced loudly enough) would get you ostracized from leftist group.
As a person firmly in the American political left, I have to disagree with all but one of those (point 6 holds true).
1. If you don’t want Israel’s genocidal war against Gaza to stop, you are not a leftist.
2. If you don’t want trans children to get correct healthcare, you are not a leftist.
3. If you want to discriminate against LGBTQ+ people, you are not a leftist.
4. If you don’t want to fix the gender wage gap, you are not a leftist.
5. If you hold racist views, you are not a leftist.
6. The radical left has many different views on taxes. I want to eat the rich, but many on the left do indeed want taxes only to be used as funding of social services.
I’m aware I’m committing No true Scotsman fallacy here. However I don’t see people that hold these views to align anywhere close to me politically—not even moderately. On the left we call people that hold these views conservative democrats, and at best we call them centrists, never moderate leftists. The only people that call them “moderates” are the conservative democrats them selves (and maybe some republicans).
I’m also aware that there is a (very small) faction of communists and tankies, particularly in the UK, which holds anti-trans and racist views, and would agree with points 2, 3, and 5, however, even among communists, they are very niche and still very extreme, so definitely not moderate American left.
The beautiful thing about about groups and diversity is you don't get to decide who is and isn't a leftist. Many would say the same about you given how polarizing your being.
You have literally zero legitimacy or authority to define what leftism is, it doesn't belong to you.
I did admit to blatantly commit the No true Scotsman fallacy. Deciding who does and doesn’t belong in you political faction is ultimately going to result in arbitrary distinction and characterization.
Me as a leftist does not want to be politically aligned with anti-LGBTQ+, anti-feminists, and racists. These aren’t a moderate versions of my and my comrade political beliefs (except the 6th one), they are counter to them. So, as a radical leftist, I do disavow these claims, and don’t want them anywhere near me on the political spectrum.
I do very much appreciate that within the spectrum of the american left/liberals we have those view points.
Edit: to clarify i mean the view points that disagreed with the 6 up above.
I would never want to be in a monoculture where those view points are censored or shut down. It has unfortunately become more common in authoritarian states and even peaceful protests here on campuses.
Sorry to clarify I meant I appreciate the view points you posted by "those", not the ones prior to it(hence i mentioned college campuses in reference to pro-Palestine protests)
One problem with this perspective is that the American left has adopted some views that a real leftist would have some disagreement with.
Point 1 is picking a side in an ongoing war in which both side have committed many atrocities. A real leftist would acknowledge this and seek an end to the conflict in solidarity with the victims on both sides. And consider that for a war that is mostly led by groups of aggressive men, the main victims of this are women and children.
Point 2 should be considered in the context of for-profit healthcare providers and their aim of maximising profit and creating repeat customers. There is a huge conflict of interest with many of those promoting their particular idea of "correct healthcare", as they profit off it. A real leftist would give much critical consideration to the capitalist and consumerist nature of the cosmetic surgeries and pharmaceutical interventions that are used in an attempt to make individuals appear to be the opposite sex.
Point 3 is something real leftists certainly do agree on but also to acknowledge there is a conflict of rights when it comes to single-sex spaces, and that it's important to listen to left-wing feminist voices on this topic rather than cede the discussion to meet the demands of males who desire to use female spaces.
Points 4, 5 and 6 do match up with the views of real leftists.
You can be liberal / on the left and not be a leftist. Being extreme on the left should be viewed as negatively as it is to be extreme on the right. Extreme opinions of any kind are not conducive to living with people whose beliefs differ from yours.
I mean in another comment you refer to yourself as "a radical leftist" so that sort of proves my point. The points above can be held by liberal, left-of-center politicians who have a chance at holding national political office in the US. Mainstream Democrats, or at least what used to be a mainstream Democrat 10 years ago.
> There are root causes to the disproportionate incarceration of African Americans that do not boil down to "the system is racist."
To claim that there are other root causes then systematic racism behind mass incarceration of black people, is placing a lot of heavy lifting on the other. It is reasonable to assume that a person holding this belief means “cultural” or, worse, “biological”. In either case, it is a racist view to hold. A conservative democrat can hold this belief, and many indeed do, however, they cannot claim to be leftists at that point, and most actually don’t. They may call them selves “moderate democrats” but I’ve never heard them call them selves “moderately left” (I’m willing to admit I’m wrong here if shown otherwise).
The leftist belief here is that systematic racism exists, and is the reason black people are disproportionately incarcerated. To reject this belief, isn’t a moderate version of the traditional leftist belief. It is counter to it. Therefor, if you reject the existence of systematic racism, you are not a moderate leftist, you simply aren’t a leftist.
I never claimed a leftist could or would hold any of these views. To the contrary I'm pointing out that leftism is such a fringe minority belief structure in the US that you can be a wildly popular mainstream Democrat, have a change at being elected President, and have the types of beliefs above and still have most of the country be more conservative to you.
From the very first comment:
> > > > I can think of a handful of things that the moderate American left would do / agree on that the more extreme elements would not
> > > > any of [these beliefs] ... would get you ostracized from [a] leftist group.
You prove both of my points beautifully in this thread as well as my new one that leftism is a radical fringe belief system when you say even suggesting there might be any other cause than racism for #5 is itself racism.
I never said anything was "a moderate version of a leftist belief," I'm not sure where exactly you got that.
You can listen to the thing I posted. I think he crystalized really well how unfettered free speech is fundamentally a contradiction. So long as one party's speech can chill the speech of another (ie coordinated harassment or doxxing of trans influencers) then site owners are going to be obligated to pick a side and limit some kinds of speech. That just sounds like logic to me.
According to your comment history you’re a leftist who, among other things, supports Kyle Rittenhouse. I would say this is a rare configuration of positions.
The point you’re making about Collins suffers because you only labelled him an “extreme leftist”, over and over again, without examples of this behavior. So I went looking, myself. Apparently he was pulled off Twitter coverage because he made posts mocking Elon Musk for suspending the accounts of other journalists. While this might be too opinionated for a professional whose beat includes Musk, it isn’t evidence of “extreme left” views.
> Collins has been yanked off the air from NBC and MSNBC but remains on staff. He has been actively tweeting and retweeting the latest developments related to Musk’s controversial decision to ban the accounts of several left-leaning journalists who were critical of his management of the social media app.
A persons very limited comment history is not a strong measure of values, I don't use this site that much.
I'm not a Kyle Rittenhouse supporter, I merely held that he didn't commit murder which is what many legal experts held as well.
Fwiw my actual policy and culture positions are much more aligned with liberalism when its pragmatic and not pathological altruism.
I'm happy to provide references on ben collins bias, he has been called out multiple times for spreading misinformation despite claiming to be an expert on it.
He has been objectively criticized by multiple legit journalists like glenn greenwald and even moderates like nate silver.
Ben collins is a promoter of this left right war, he was literally suspended for being biased. That is not a good reporter, he is a beneficiary of the culture war and its disrespectful to actual factual journalism to call him anything else but a political stereographer who is out to push ideology above facts.
Worth noting that this reply has a lot of the same content as your first one but isn't flagged. This is mostly due to it being phrased in a far less inflammatory manner I think.
You do have a valid point in what you are trying to say (that Collins got suspended for his strong bias), but the way you communicate it is really doing harm to your message - you are antagonizing too much.
It’s so niche that it regularly wins the popular vote in the US despite massive voter suppression.
The only reason the god n guns lobby wins in the US is 1. the constitutional settlement which massively overweights rural voters and 2. corporate lobbying in a winner takes all system which is prepared to hold its nose and bankroll racist hicks if it means they get their corporate welfare.
You are a great nation, but very little that anyone admires about the US has come from the flyover states (and even then probably because of federal pork barrel science and defence funding for those educated elites you hate so much).
You misinterpreted Democrats and progressives, most Democrats, minorities and liberals are closer to the center left rather than extreme left. Polling from many reliable places, including pew, shows Progressive ideology is dominated by upper class white people.
Why do you think stripping resources from the police was so popular amongst upper class intectuals but not what black Americans actually wanted according to the actual data. Progressivism in America is an ideology that represents the upper class, not minorities nor traditional liberals nor the working class.
I'm downvoting your comments for their strong foaming at the mouth unhinged vibes, and I'd do the same if they ranted in a similar manner against some other part of US culture.
I dare say you could make a comment with fewer empty buzz phrases if you tried.
Further south in the wheat belt, and often called BnS Inseminators Balls with the <cough> Hay day being more the late 1980s and 1990s.
Lot's of burnouts, circle work, lube slides, burning wrecks, food dye, and actual ball in a tent, fire engines, drinking, limousines (both real hires and "bush mechanic" stretched tractors), etc.
Being so far away I either flew in from the Kimberleys or hitch hiked across from Perth to go to a couple.
EDIT: and I guess the B&S was part of the answer to this 1959 question?
> An American psychologist, Mrs Graham Bell, said she wondered how Australian men and women ever got together enough to get married. But it is not true that Ordinary Australians fail to recognise the value of women. Any man will tell you they are indispensable for packing picnic-baskets, and for keeping other women company while you are drinking with their husbands
I'm so square that if I'd tried a pun like that, everyone would've baled.
Looks very reminiscent[0] of Carnival[1], except not seasonal, no utes[2], and we have very few bogans or muppets[3] so ours are usually urban[4]. Also, confetti[5] instead of food colouring.
(good that Sister Sanguinista has a way to relax; people-helping jobs, like vet practice, seem to be a real ticket to burnout)
[0] especially the slogan "where the rams get used and the ewes get rammed"
[1] some balls are held for charity, and some for fancy dress[6], but holding them for pleasure is the course which we profess.
[2] boots and roots, yes. Does "pull" originate from pulling someone into your swag?
[3] coming from an anglophone culture, I was amazed that instead of making "glass pinecones"[7], everyone, despite elevated BAC, piles their dead soldiers in ranks by the recycle bins.
[4] if you're into Analogue Dance Music, there's nothing quite like doof doof in a medieval guild hall or old town alleyway[8]. The recent shopping malls are not so scenic, and the roman coliseums are historic but are too open for gut-felt acoustics.
[5] there's a song somewhere on YT by a young dutch lady about how Karneval is wonderful but it still is a little annoying, mornings, to be picking the confetti out of your pubic hair — with enough compressed air, one can send confetti tens of meters into 2nd storey windows. (we colour our faces via airbrush, and use markers only on exposed skin)
Speaking of exposed skin, some of those blokes might could be risking the worst sunburns of their lives.
> If the female is receptive, she will stand for mating.
So that we know when a ewe has been mated, we place a coloured liquid underneath the ewe or place a harness on the tup which hold a coloured crayon. We change the colour at certain intervals so we know who has been mated when. This explains why you see sheep with different coloured bottoms all over Yorkshire!
I think the downvotes are because we don't really want the culture war on hackernews. It tends to not be a very productive topic and makes people emotional, making discussion quality even worse than most other politics (like economic policy, regulations or international relations).
I have a stack about a foot tall of copies i collected from the Obama era. Anyone idea what i should do with them? Perhaps donate them to the library as a public good?
They are still hilarious. My favorite is one where they pretended a Chinese ceo of a fish company bought the paper. It was filled with articles with bad statistics trying to get the common American to eat more fish, how wonderful the ccp is, and how weak and decadent the American people are. They also made the grammar terrible. Definitely riding the line with seeing what they could get away with!
I'm building a free magazine encyclopedia wiki. My email is on my profile. Happy to scan them and upload them if they are not already available in electronic format.
You're never quite sure what you're actually looking at on the web.
Was this edited at any point after the listed publish date? Did it survive intact during the backend migrations since? Is that formatting supposed to be a bit weird? Is there originally supposed to be an image after that oddly placed paragraph break?
What did it look like back when `<blink>` and `<marquee>` were still a thing? Did it look better at 800x600? Did it show the same page to all user-agents?
Hard copies, physical reality (or at least rasters), are still the ultimate form of immutability.
The article is funny and I agree with overall sentiment, but it's always surprising how people just forget Kosovo and Somalia. Clinton bombed a European country and doubled down on a hopeless mission in an African hellhole (before giving up), not exactly "sustained peace abroad". Even if you agree with the moves, you can't say it was all peace and love.
True, but those were tiny interventions that hardly affected mainstream USA at all, unlike the brutalizing experience of 9/11, Iraq, and Afghanistan in the following decade.
the only thing it tells me is that time moves forward and a 70+ year old Vietnam veteran can't fit the role.
if you're saying that it indicates that the conflicts had a large impact, I would argue that actually it's because the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts lasted a long time and had an impact on Americans specifically, and Americans specifically have a large impact on television/movies/media.
Go ask Albanians and Serbs about their 'tiny intervention'.
The Americans lost 4500 in Iraq and 2400 in Afghanistan.
10000ish were killed in the Kosovo War, and 200,000 people ( at least ) were displaced.
Comparing the Kosovo and Somalia operations to Iraq and Afghanistan is like comparing a fly to a whale in basically any terms that matter. Human suffering, duration, lives lost, monetary cost, reputational cost in the world, etc.
I don't think I'm the target audience. I don't really get it.
I spent years homeless. I try to write about meaningful ways to help the homeless while preserving their agency. I try to write about systemic issues I feel contribute to the problem.
I don't find that second link funny or relatable or anything that makes sense to me.
I don’t think any of the articles that grandparent linked are really the most exemplary Onion articles. The onion is really at its best when it manages to nail it exactly right. Sometimes they are just so perfectly in touch with cultural zeitgeist it’s uncanny. Here are two of the most memorable ones in recent memory:
The onion has always been political commentary. In my opinion, it is some of the most impactful, even to this day. Every time there is a mass shooting, the onion reposts the same article — linked above. All they do is edit the time and place. They also bump every other article they published to the front page.
It's incredible commentary on the fact these things keep happening in completely predictable ways.
> ‘The Onion’ Stands With Israel Because It Seems Like You Get In Less Trouble For That
This is a recent Onion classic.
The thing about the Onion is, once you’ve got a great headline - and maybe a photo, which will usually be a head shot - the text of the article sometimes seems largely superfluous. They actually ought to be doing better in the age of Twitter and so on, but it didn’t work out that way.
I’ve felt for a long time that The Onion is the reincarnation of Voltaire: savage, subtle, clever, culturally relevant, slightly undersold in its time. They will be studied in history books, or whatever the equivalent of books become. Even if you don’t agree with the political spin, you cannot discount the beauty of how they took such a common political phrase and turned it on its head like that.
I happen to enjoy the content itself, even if it's all just riffing on the joke on the headline. But I'm a big fan of snark in general.
Also, I'm not 100% sure, but perhaps there are some SEO boosts from having long form article content that wouldn't be gained from just having a title and a blurb (though they do also do those very short form articles as well, where it's a few sentences with the headline)
Okay, I chuckled at the Ted Kaczynski signature, aka The Unabomber.
I assumed all the other "board member signatures" were similarly infamous bad guys but I can't figure out what they all are and when I search on Steve Hannah, he apparently actually was the CEO of The Onion at one time.
I agree with some of their points about it being a conflict going back hundreds of years. I personally think it's inevitable that war broke out given how psycho controlling Isreal is about Gaza's water supply.
I still probably am not the target audience for The Onion and won't really understand a lot of it. I was full-time homemaker a lot of years for an American woman my age. I did well in school. I value HN and have participated here a lot, but have zero friends, professional contacts etc via HN.
I don't generally "go along to get along." I try to avoid social friction by other means and the result appears to be I don't ever really fit in anywhere because I'm not willing to mouth empty agreement with the group consensus.
And, I mean, there's likely other reasons I fail to fit in anywhere but I strongly suspect that's a really large factor.
Publisher Emeritus, T. Herman Zweibel, writes frequent editorials, growing more and more erratic until he's removed from power by the board of directors in the 1950s.
There's not any correlation between fitting the standard HN mold and liking The Onion. I'm a barista who just checks in here for the marginal stuff outside the tech professional centered stuff, and I'm a big fan of The Onion.
Honestly, I think the disconnect is that you pay very close attention while you read, while the Onion's style caters more to a quick glance-through. They rarely have every point nailed down completely, because they're expecting you to just be moving on quickly anyway.
As a Canuck, US politics is typically indecipherable, eh! Most news makes no sense, until I found The Onion. Now you are telling me, you bunch of hosers made it all up!
Signed "Bob Jenkins, Canadian Minister of National Affairs"
"You made it all up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!”, Charlton Heston, a Great Canadian
Tangent: congrats on no longer being homeless! Your comment piqued my curiosity so I checked out your profile, and wow! is it great, full of interesting links etc. Glad you're here on HN.
P.S. Yeah, the onion is pretty hit-or-miss, tho the ratio is pretty good IMHO. YMMV but one of my all-time favorites was about Harry Potter being a sinister secret recruiting vehicle for satan worship -- and I learned about it from a friend whose parents were among the huge number of christianists who thought it was legit journalism and forwarded it in one of the biggest ~early-internet-days chainmail events ever.
Ignoring for the moment that "unsurface" isn't even a word, I think you mean the opposite, "surface" (as a slightly pretentious way of saying "discover").
“Never mind that Dr. Glickman screwed up and bought this colossal ditz of a receptionist more computer than she could ever possibly need for record-keeping at a small dentist's office.“
FYI, Harvard Square is a public place, thousands of people visit and pass through it every day who aren't Harvard students. It's not part of the actual Harvard campus (as opposed to e.g. Harvard Yard).
I think this is good news, because G/O Media websites are the worst.
I was at UW-Madison when The Onion started. We had a wealth of student newspapers at the time, along with The Daily Cardinal and The Badger Herald. Scott Dikkers and Todd Hanson, writers for The Onion, also wrote great comic strips for the Cardinal (Jim's Journal and Badgers and Other Animals, respectively).
And I can't find a link for it, but "Special Olympics T-Ball Stand Pitches Perfect Game".
Incidentally, Jeremy Scahill of The Intercept was also writing for the student newspapers way back in the day, though he was obviously doing political stuff and not comedy.
It would have been a vastly different story if only Cosgrove kept her mouth shut about access to the new all-weather Sedgwick County Park municipal pool.
Pool politics have torn America apart.
Here in Australia we have to make do with The Shovel
British conservative, I think it’s hilarious if sweary, but that’s just Australians. Outside the US conservatism and Trump support are, shall we say, loosely coupled. More British conservatives would prefer a Biden victory to a Trump one (40% to 31%).
I was there too and I remember thinking that lots of universities must have humor newspapers as funny as The Onion. Nope!
BTW Dan Vebber also wrote a strip for the Daily Cardinal and wrote for The Onion. He went on to write for Buffy and a lot of other shows, currently exec. producer of The Simpsons. He’s also the genius behind The Two Felipes https://www.mkepunk.com/releases/the-two-felipes-eat-your-fi...
I remember my first introduction to the onion was the print edition at my university. What a great publication- and they authored what has to be the best amicus brief to the Supreme Court ever. https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-293/242292/2022...
They penned two briefs, the one you linked to was never filed with the court (it “sides” with the police). The one they filed with the court is different. You can read about it here and both are linked: https://reason.com/volokh/2022/10/28/babylon-bee-files-amicu...
This is the best birthday present I could have asked for. The Onion News Network has the funniest, most prescient videos online and I love going back to watch them. Even if the Onion comes back half as funny as they were it's going to be fabulous. Here are a few of my lesser-known favorites:
I watch "The Onion's Future News From The Year 2137" regularly. You have to pause it to catch everything, it's packed with little bits of humor in the on-screen graphics.
Reporters having a panel discussion on teevee. I stopped the video and read each of the supporting print stories that flashed by and they were perfect, too.
This is great news. Jim Spanfeller and G/O media are pretty well known as a chop shop for media properties - there's not a single part of the former Gawker empire that's done even half-decently under their control.
> In an email to G/O Media staff that was obtained by The New York Times, Jim Spanfeller, the chief executive, said the company was “undergoing an extensive review of our portfolio with the intention of coring down to our leading sites in terms of audience and revenues.”
Gawker put a bunch of famous sites together, but The Onion is the only one that I'd expect anyone who wasn't terminally online to recognize. I'm not sure how that didn't make their list of "leading sites", but I'm grateful.
There's a bit of vicarious schadenfreude that Spanfeller's tactics were so horrific that nearly all the staff of G/O media from before 2020 abandoned ship and went on to create sites that are more successful than what the staff escaped from. Some even went on to be major journalists for massive publications, like Tyler Rogoway and Jason Schreier. The Onion has been the last holdout because it's a storied name, unlike Jalopnik or The Root, and now it's finally free.
> When asked whether he had purchased The Onion, Lawson played coy. "What's The Onion?" he replied. Then, "What's a Tetrahedron?" Business Insider was unsure how to respond to these questions.
From what I gather, they invested in Onion News Network for IFC, and when that got canceled relatively quickly, they didn't risk online-only distribution. Maybe 2011 was too early to pivot to video? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onion_News_Network
My favorite bit, still stuck in my head whenever I see politicians from both parties rush to the scene of a protest or whatever, is "New Live Poll Lets Pundits Pander To Viewers In Real Time": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFpK_r-jEXg
They may also have been victimized by the scandal where Facebook was lying about the engagement that short-form videos generated over other kinds of content, leading several content producers into bankruptcy or near bankruptcy through loss of ad revenue when they pivoted towards it.
I don’t know who Ben Collins is and at a first read of his bio I’m not really sure who would. My first instinct is that this is one of those terminally online things, like how I kept reading references to “Taylor Lorenz” as if she were the devil incarnate and when I finally looked into it she was just another pretty boring journalist.
Since you asked, a genuine answer. I suspect it's because Ben Collins is a veteran of the left-wing "disinformation" beat, most recently for MSNBC until he lost that gig -- so the admittedly cryptic parent comment is positing that as a seasoned culture warrior, Collins will likely apply The Onion as a tool in the culture war.
The Onion's comedic point-of-view used to be less predictable, but as the culture war as progressed, so too has The Onion's voice, and it's a more reliable voice for the left these days. If you rue that trend, for whatever reason, Collins provides little reason to imagine things will change.
Ben Collins, the guy who got suspended from MSNBC for criticizing Elon Musk too hard? Upset Nate Silver because he criticized him too hard? Upset Matt Taibbi for making fun of him for doing PR work for a billionaire? I think he’s perfect for the job honestly.
If _MSNBC_ thinks he’s too overtly partisan and not up to journalistic standards, I’d say Collins fails to clear the absolute lowest bar in news media ethics.
Boy do I have to warn you about The Onion’s content then.
Also if you think being partisan is the lowest bar instead of “report the truth” or “be accurate and fair” then that tells me enough already about your values.
I don't know any of the context around that tweet, but The Onion has obviously chosen the most innocent, blameless celebrity they could think of to make sure it's a clear joke to everyone, right? Like finding the skinniest person and calling them obese.
The writer of that article seems to have still somehow misunderstood and come to the conclusion that The Onion actually hates Quvenzhané Wallis. I wonder if they really don't get it, or if they're just sort of performatively not getting it for the outrage article.
On the contrary, the context was that the kid was getting a lot of very stupid criticism already. It’s certainly why they attempted the joke.
I don’t think anything about that situation was somehow off limits or immune to satire, they just didn’t pull off the joke. It’s not like the kid was likely to have seen the joke, so no worries there. The problem is that when you use language like that and you’re not even funny, you’re operating at the Andrew Dice Clay level of comedy. That should inspire suicidal ideation in any comedian (who isn’t Andrew Dice Clay… I guess…).
They also seem to think their Diamond Joe Biden character made real Joe Biden too popular, and their self-seriousness about this is making it hard for them to do anything political.
You're clearly not alone in this, but I never realised they even did videos, fwiw. Similar era I was enjoying great content on the site, and it just sort of faded but didn't disappear, from my perspective, so I don't know to what extent it's purely about rise and fall of video really.
(I did just watch the very good MacBook Wheel one though.)
Since everyone is just posting their favourite headlines:
Report: Average Male 4,000% Less Effective In Fights Than They Imagine
What makes the onion writing truly great is how they discipline themselves to stick to a single bit for a given article. The entire punchline is in the headline, and the rest of the article is about as straight-laced as you could imagine, as if it was written by a real reporter in a world where the absurd thing was not unusual at all. It's a sort of written version of a deadpan delivery.
Missing from the Internet is "The Onion Guide to Actual Reality", a Flash based interactive feature from the 90s. It was brilliant and prescient like all good Onion features but it may never be ported to Ruffle or whatever else can render that content. Maybe Global Tetrahedron will invest in preserving some of that history.
Also, le boy picked up my copy of Our Dumb Century and read it cover to cover a few years ago. I was pleased.
> Over time, we’ll be introducing new products and getting into new mediums. But more than anything – this is about unleashing the creative team that’s been making you laugh for over 30 years.
There's absolutely nothing on The Onion that requires a non-text medium.
Exactly! Comedians aren’t funny when they have opinions. They’re only funny when they tell jokes that are carefully calculated not to make anyone upset about anything.
I’d say there’s a difference between expressing an opinion, and moralizing about it. One can make great comedy with the former, while the latter sucks because the comedy is completely subjugated by the message. It’s the same difference between heavy metal and Christian metal. Same instruments, same basslines, etc., except the latter is trying to push you towards belief, and thus it’s annoying.
Jeff Lawson has state of Michigan connections. A University of Michigan grad he started a digital textbook company, but was just too early. Then he was founding CTO of StubHub which is based in Detroit.
I regret never actually meeting him though we have some mutual friends in common. Tried to get him to speak at a hackathon I was running in Detroit during his early days at Twilio but he was simply too busy which I can understand. Got Dug Song, cofounder of Duo Security, and he did a terrific job of inspiring all of us.
It is not, just sharing some information about the guy's background a lot of folks might not know. Might explain why he didn't insist in moving them from Chicago and relocating them to the West coast.
Anyone aware of an archive for each of their stories? Not the entire website/home page archive. Would love this in markdown format for an eInk story-a-day, etc.
I'll note that most of the comments refer to a different era of The Onion, known as the "Funny" era.
The more recent years have been referred to as the "Meh" era, reflecting the repetitive humor, recycling of jokes, and general lack of energy.
Every once in a while, I check back to see if The Onion got funny again. Still hoping. Maybe this purchase will be the catalyst, the peeling every onion needs over time.
it's definitely been in its 'clapter' era, where there joke is: you should find this funny because you agree with this viewpoint. Every joke about jk rowling barely qualifies as a joke but they go viral for the sake of insulting her.
It's best when it's subversize and zagged somewhat unpredictably.
This whole thread is full of examples from the 'good old days' that are relevant now. If this were the '90s the figure of fun would be somebody else, and somebody back then would also think "well, that barely qualifies as a joke".
Well, not like the onion could get any worse (frankly) so I’m hopeful. I think this world would do fine with a bit more self depreciating and satirical humor.
I used to love it. But in recent years, they only ever seem to make fun of Republican and rarely Democrats. I'd prefer to see them shit on everyone, because they all deserve it.
In recent years one of the two parties was taken over by a reality show host blowhard with no impulse control or self awareness. It would be weird if the media didn't capitalize on that with extra attention.
The worst idea of our time is that there's some sort of law or balance in the universe preventing one party from ever deserving more criticism than the other because there's at all times some sort of magical fixed equivalence or symmetry to their dysfunction.
Sometimes a guy who tweets all day, pays off porn stars, and has to pay $25 million for having run a fake university is just funnier. That's Occam's razor. Pretending there's full dignity in that would be a kind of participation trophy.
“The worst idea of our time is that there’s some sort of law or balance in the Universe preventing one party from ever deserving more criticism than the other.” lol - this sounds alot like the lady who said,"i cant understand how George Bush won, i dont know a single person who voted for him"
Hopefully we will see more periodicals, social
media, and comics taking on the far left - between the doddering old man, his dippy VP, and all the weird identity politics theyve mustered up, the jokes write themselves. The Onion cant be any worse.
* Biden Carried Away By Ants
* Janet Yellen Unveils Plan To Boost Economy By Stealing World’s Largest Diamond
* Congress Quickly Passes Funding For National Night-Light After Waking Up From Scary Dream
* Biden Surges In Polls After Convincing Terrified Voters He Causing Eclipse
* Biden: ‘Israel Has An Obligation Not To Harm My Reelection Chances’
* What Trump Will Do On His First Day In Office
* Trump Warns Of Electric Vehicles Raping, Murdering Americans
* Kamala Harris Joins D.C. Coworking Space
By my count, that's five stories with a Democrat as the principal character (three specifically for Biden), two with a Republican/Trump, and one mocking Congress as an institution.
That being said, looking through the recent archive it seems like these things come in waves, with a series of stories targeting Republicans (mostly Trump), followed by a few in a row that go after Biden or Harris.
I guess it's cheaper than a real news site, and is there any difference anymore? Babylon Bee has become defacto news now. I don't mean this in terms of blaming the left or the right, but just that it's hard for any entity to have any monopoly on the truth anymore. Mainstream, established news sites have to compete against AI-generated content and influencers in the 'news space', which has blurred the lines between truth or fiction or made it hard to know what is real or not.
Sometimes stories can be true and and yet undisguisable from 'fake' news, hence why r/nottheoinion is a thing.
I have seen people on twitter post literal fake news, and it goes viral until later debunked or deleted, which can still take hours even with community notes. Even reputable news sites are still occasionally forced to amend or even outright retract stories. When something chaotic and unexpected happens for which narration is unreliable, like a school shooting, who is right? It's just speculation for the first hour or so until something approaching 'truth' or an 'official narrative' coalesces or congeals.
it's be awesome if the three ppl who downvoted my post could elaborate how i was wrong . It is possible I am way off and someone can guide me to the truth that I am missing here. I think communication is helpful for resolving differences and maybe someone can communicate how I erred that would be more helpful. Thanks.
I wish that there was an equivalent to The Onion with a different political slant, but the quality of the writing in all of the Onion copycats is just plain bad. The Babylon Bee is awful.
I was thinking of the one they got kicked off twitter for-
"The Babylon Bee's Man Of The Year Is Rachel Levine"
featuring gems like
"UPDATE: Since announcing this award, we've been told that Levine actually identifies as a woman. We have still chosen to give the award as his self-identification has no bearing on the truth. Congratulations, Rachel Levine!"
