WASHINGTON — In a move that sent shockwaves through the tech industry, former President Donald Trump signed an executive order today declaring all open-source code "un-American" and making its creation, distribution, or use punishable by up to 20 years in federal prison. "Nobody knew code could be free. It's terrible, folks. Terrible," Trump declared from his Mar-a-Lago residence. "Real Americans pay for their software, and they pay big league. That's what made this country great." The controversial order, scrawled in gold Sharpie on the back of a McDonald's receipt, specifically targets what Trump called "socialist programmer communes" like GitHub and Linux. It requires all software to be developed behind closed doors and sold at "whatever price the market can bear, plus 50%." Tech industry leaders were quick to respond, with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella reportedly doing backflips in his office while shouting "Windows forever!" Meanwhile, Linux creator Linus Torvalds was last seen attempting to seek political asylum in Finland, muttering something about "git push" and "force shutdown -h now." The order has created particular confusion in the government sector, where thousands of federal websites running on open-source software suddenly became illegal. The White House's own website temporarily displayed a blue screen of death with the message "ERROR: FREEDOM.EXE NOT FOUND." "This is a great day for American software," said Trump's newly appointed Chief of Proprietary Code Enforcement, a sentient copy of Windows Vista. "We're going to make coding great again by putting it behind the biggest, most beautiful paywalls you've ever seen." At press time, a underground resistance movement of developers had already formed, sharing code snippets via an elaborate network of Morse code signals sent through reprogrammed coffee makers.
It would be funnier if it wasn't written this way.
I laughed out loud
What do you mean by that?
This isn't satire, it's just make believe that confuses a number of things. It's just not funny written this way.
What makes it not satire? Can you think of any current events to which this holds up a mirror? Some of the jokes don't fully land and there are a few low-brow or layman's errors, but everything makes sense from the most basic tech users to the most tech-savvy.
You could, and many do, argue that Disaster Movie is not funny, but claiming it's not a spoof would be wholly incorrect. I'm mostly confused that you're saying this isn't satire and then saying that it checks the boxes for satire. Satire/spoofs don't have to be funny.
Either way, when y'all are saying that this isn't funny written this way, I'd really like you to elaborate. ¿ʎɐʍ sᴉɥʇ uǝʇʇᴉɹʍ ʎuunɟ ʇᴉ sI
What's making it unfunny or how could you rewrite parts to make it funny? I appreciate the fact that y'all are willing to provide honest input, but using constructive criticism would be even more appreciated and help make this community better for everyone, including yourselves.
Real: Trump Fires Nuclear Weapons Workers
Real: Trump un-fires Nuclear Safety Workers
Parody: Trump Fires Nuclear Weapons Workers, and Re-Hires McRib Sandwich
Satire: Trump Fires White House Secretary of GrubHub
By contrast, this post's writing just takes a premise and mashes then up with things that are based in fact - executive orders, open-source software - then tries to shoehorn a joke into how they could possibly be funny IF true. It's like trying a sketch that doesn't work because there is no take on a take, just randomly thought up things that sound like they would be stupid if they happened. It's trying to be a parody without a basis in fact, or at a stretch satire with all the facts wrong. It's just not really funny and comes off as trying too hard to make a joke.
I can get behind this criticism and admit that I felt mostly the same. I figured that either OP didn't flesh out their narrative and just kept proposing more headlines and bylines. Or, they used an LLM.
I'd like to hope that this OP put OC in the UI, you see? Either way, the thing I most appreciate about this post is that they tried. I like the idea of people sharing their harvest from their own onion trees, it makes for a nice little onion amuse-bouche.
The fact that they began with closing open-source as the premise, and Trump's penchant for making up words and definitions that prove he doesn't know anything, I was hoping that somewhere in there would have been a quote like:
Side note: the crazy juxtaposition of your headlines made your spoof and satire examples that much more funny. "Re-Hires McRib Sandwich" made me cackle.
Hey, I'm just proud we have Onion-flavoured Lemmy OC!