One of the things I do frequently is read the Snopes’ “What’s New” page. Frequently, the page is lousy with stories shared on social media that originate from a handful of fake news sites. For instance, this morning there was a story about Jaden Smith starting a clothing line called “666” because god told him to.
My question is this: I can understand if a site published these stories just to have them shared on facebook so they could go “Ha ha, fooled you”, but is there actually an audience who reads stories like this and finds humor/entertainment in them?
I mean, I understand satire, but Empire News reporting that Screech was convicted of murder instead of the factual truth that an assault took place, or that Bruno Mars is really Michael Jackson’s son don’t seem to really be anything more than “made you look”.
I’d say it’s all variations on click-bait. Even sober, respectable news and info sites seem to have a bottom half of trashy, nonsensical links these days. If it’s so out of control that the second-rate sites have to link to crap/fake/e-tabloid sites… I am unsurprised.
Of course there’s an audience. There’s even an audience of people who would travel to a supermarket or newsstand and plunk down actual money toallowthemselvestobeseenreadingthatstuff.
For the most part calling them satire is a bit of a stretch. Satire is supposed to make some kind of point. What’s the point of saying Dustin Diamond’s stabbing victim died? What’s funny about it?
The Onion publishes a handful of funny stories, but a lot of them are realistic looking stories that aren’t the tiniest bit funny, other than allowing people to smugly mock people who believed them. But the smug people don’t seem to understand that it’s not unreasonable to think a well written, serious looking article could be factual. It’s not uncommon to see stories that look a lot like thisin the Onion.
The Onion isn’t as well known as a lot of people seem to think, and there’s nothing about the name that would indicate it’s a humor site, especially considering there are legit papers with similar names.
The first has none of the wink-wink indicators that it isn’t meant to be taken seriously, while the second does. The first could be true, similar things have happened, but the second is obviously satire.
And while this one is not rip-roaringly funny, no one other than a die-hard CTer would take it seriously either. It’s straight satire:
Yes, this exactly. I get Onion level satire, but the news sites dominating Snopes these days are not funny or thought provoking or proving a point. They are just trying to get people to believe lies.
I can’t seem to find a link, but I do recall one such site with a disclaimer that said something to the effect of “it is up to the reader to second source everything they read”
For the record, my work site let me see the first article just fine. It blocked the Onion article saying that it is a humor site. So my work firewall can tell the difference between not funny and funny.
It’s basic clickspam. They spend nothing on research or basic journalism, make up a sensational headline, sell ads based on page views and collect the checks from their high traffic site. It’s an eyeball farm. They only call it “satire” to justify their phishing scheme to their victims.
The Onion strives as far as I can tell to be a humorous, entertaining publication. Just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean others aren’t getting real enjoyment from it. The same applies (though they were certainly less talented) to the late Weekly World News. Say what you like about them, but people paid money for Bat Boy t-shirts and generally seemed to find WWN worthwhile.
I would venture to guess that no one seeks out Empire News on their own. They dangle their bait on Facebook, wait for clueless people to get snagged, and collect the ad revenue.
So it’s not a satire site because it fails on your level of funny and satire? I don’t think Jimmy Fallon is the least bit funny, but he IS known to be a comedian (i’ve heard.)
No, it’s not a satire site, because there’s nothing satirical about what they’re saying.
It’s one thing to publish articles that lampoon or otherwise skewer common news articles and common topics. For example, the famous Onion “poll” wherein rural Americans were found to prefer Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to President Obama.
But reporting that Dustin Diamond is a murderer, instead of merely being charged with a violent crime is… well… not satirical, funny or anything else other than wildly inaccurate.
I hate those bad ‘satire’ sites as much as most people, but the tone of most of their articles usually feels less than serious to me. Not funny or insightful or purposeful in any way, but there’s usually some silly detail(s) within them.
This, for example, would have no place in a serious article:
Problem is they bury the silly stuff so deep into the article that most people have already looked away by then.
There’s a very good long-running one here in Thailand that spoofs The Nation, the lesser of Bangkok’s two English-language dailies. It’s called Not the Nation. Much effort has been expended trying to figure out who exactly is behind it. Obviously someone familiar with the inner workings of The Nation, but whoever it is remains a mystery.
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