this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2024
688 points (99.3% liked)

The Onion

4373 readers
545 users here now

The Onion

A place to share and discuss stories from The Onion, Clickhole, and other satire.

Great Satire Writing:

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
top 37 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 190 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Is this one of those, as a kid Bart seems cool, but now as an adult facing the reality it doesn't seem so cool?

[–] [email protected] 31 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Most comedies have someone funny to watch, but not if they actually existed and affected your life. Don't get me wrong, I love Bender, but RL Bender as a friend would be full no contact from me.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago

I love peter griffin but I would probably kill him in real life :O

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

opposite honestly

[–] [email protected] 137 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I almost ate the onion on this one. It's far too plausible!

[–] [email protected] 40 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Almost all the Trump ones are - it's more difficult than it should be to push satire beyond things that Trump and his lackeys have actually done.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I can't remember the last Trump ad that featured Trump looking into the camera and making a true statement.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I haven't seen ads for anyone at all. What are you watching that has political ads? Late night comedy shows?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Youtube, and basically every streaming service we don't pay for that shows ads. But I'm in a swing states, so that's probably why. I can't wait until the election is over and I can stop getting nonstop political ads.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago

Might I recommend uBlock origin on Firefox for YouTube? It makes it so much more bareable

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago

Interesting. I don't watch YouTube or anything that streams with ads. Screw that.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

what's wrong with late night comedy shows?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Nothing at all. They're just more apt to show an ad to make fun of them.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago
[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago

I can’t remember him ever making a true statement to begin with.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 days ago

I'm glad you pointed it out, I didn't realize and thought this was real. There's not much Trump can do to surprise me at this point

[–] [email protected] 68 points 2 days ago (3 children)

This might end up being one of those times where the onion has to print a retraction because they predicted the future again.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I ate the onion; thought I already had heard these exact ads. I definitely have heard an ad attacking a Democrat and wondered why they were playing dark and thunderous tones over all the good things the Dem voted for.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago

I did too, even told someone in the room with me about it before realizing it was the onion, they weren't even surprised

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Yeah. I feel bad for shows like Southpark. Its a bit tough to parody real life.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I don't feel bad for south park, they've caused a fair amount of damage

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 days ago

Climate change denial. That's the biggest thing for me: they apologized, but it took fifteen years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ManBearPig

I never jived much with the general nihilism and both/all sides-ism I felt from it, which is probably unfair given it's meant to be a crass comedy.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Not the original commenter, but my guess is because—supposedly—they inspired "kick a ginger day." (Wikipedia) They also pissed off a lot of religious folk by making fun of the absurd beliefs held by various mainstream religions, but I imagine the only people who would take offense to that would be members of said religions who take themselves a bit too seriously.

On the other hand...

  • They damaged The Church of Scientology's credibility and demonstrated that it's possible to make fun of that cult without life-ruining retaliation.
  • They openly disregarded bomb threats against their creators and the studio to take a stand against groups using threats of violence as a way to silence others.
  • They called out the phenomenon of corporations bowing foreign government censorship in exchange for market access.
  • Recently, they used a montage sequence to parody how utterly fucked the American healthcare system is.

A lot of their episodes are comedic criticisms of the corrupt institutions in the United States, and they do a good job demonstrating the consequences to people who would otherwise be politically apathetic. But then again, a bunch of people took the wrong messages away and ended up being inspired by Eric Cartman.

It's a mixed bag, but in my opinion, the show has probably done more good than harm.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Besides of the whole "kick a ginger day" thing, they also made "Death Camp of Tolerance", and bigots to this day are using arguments from it to support whatever movement they came up with to dismantle progressivism in the name of "fairness and balancedness", which usually boils down to painting progressives as unreasonable radicals (as their views are not always held by others, the whole "why you don't tolerate intolerance?" stuff, etc.), and bigots as more reasonable than they actually are as long as they have some "reason" behind their bigotry.

Also an episode of South Park is currently used by transhpobes to strip trans people of their rights, because "what if a man will pretend to be a trans woman".

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

While I'm not the biggest fan of the South Park creators' political views, I'm more inclined to say that people using South Park to double down on their bigotry is more of a reflection of themselves than the show.

South Park has undoubtedly made some very fucked-up and politically charged episodes in its 20-something year run. For better or worse, it's their bread and butter to intentionally piss people off by parodying various groups, current events, and American society as a whole. I don't really get the impression that the show is malicious, though. More so that they're immaturely edgy and willing to push the boundaries of what is considered acceptable discourse.

I'm not going to claim that the episodes mentioned here were without negative consequences to already-marginalized groups (or even any good), but my opinion is that if someone is going to cherry-pick an episode out of a show known for coming up with absurd and over-the-top shit, they were going to look for something to reaffirm their bigoted perspective regardless of whether it came from South Park or some other exaggerated media like Alex Jones. The problem isn't so much that there exists fiction that bigots can point at to demonstrate their views, as much as its that they held those views in the first place.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

I'm confused.. how? They never promoted Trump in any capacity (if anything, they made him look worse)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago

I will eat my hat if Joe Biden wins because The Onion Endorses Joe Biden for president

[–] [email protected] 38 points 2 days ago (1 children)

"We got a lot of bad genes in our country right now," said Trump

It's true. Some of the womens' ones don't even have pockets. It's criminal.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

My brother and I have a younger sister. When she was a teen, we were blown away by the fact that girls’/women’s clothes don’t have pockets. Or worse, that there’s even FAKE pockets. Meanwhile, I was wearing cargo pants throughout high school.

Women carry more stuff than us men. Clearly they do NEED pockets. And yet they don’t get them. I’ve never even seen a fake pocket on men’s jeans.

Right now, I’m wearing pants with pockets so wide, I can fit a Nintendo Switch or a smaller tablet in them. I could fit TWO large phones AND my wallet in one of them.

Women are definitely missing out on having proper pockets.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

normalize just buying men's pants, yeah it won't show off your butt but such is the cost of pockets.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 days ago (1 children)

clips of Trump’s inflammatory remarks about Jewish people, Black people, and immigrants, including those in which the GOP candidate says “we got a lot of bad genes in our country right now” and suggests new arrivals to the country were poisoning American blood.

show Trump expounding on conspiracy theories that the Biden administration was “going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas” affected by Hurricane Helene,

The onion is just putting facts in the middle of my satire.😤

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago

Good satire is built on facts.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago

tl;dr: Trump continues to campaign for Kamala Harris.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 days ago (1 children)

They cant parody you if you are a parody of yourself.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

Tucker said as much at one of his events, in regards to hating trans people. He talked about how it was easier to just agree if people accuse him of it and double down.