I’ve noticed lately that a number of my Facebook friends, family and acquaintances are getting caught out by some of the lesser-known news parody sites and, while they may well be aware of The Onion, there are a lot more similar (if not quite as clever or popular) sites around as well. And given the propensity for public figures to say genuinely ridiculous things these days it would be helpful to have a list of as many parody news (and similar) websites as possible to help sift the real stories from the fake ones.
I’m plunking this into GQ because I’m after names of websites rather than a deep discussion of their relative merits. And I am definitely looking to avoid the “FoxNews (or whatever) is a parody of real news LOL” type comments that will usually ensue.
So: here are a list of parody news websites I know of. Additional entries are requested:
The Onion
NewsThump
NewsBiscuit
Evening Harold
Duffelblog
The Daily Mash
The Spoof
The Daily Currant
The UnReal Times
Faux News
Borowitz Report (sort of)
Derf Magazine
Any others I missed? I’m ignoring parody religious websites such as Landover Baptist or Betty Bowers as I’m looking to help avoid fake news stories rather than find general funny social commentary but feel free to add whichever ones you think are relevant.
Uncyclopedia is a parody of Wikipedia where the point is to write ridiculous articles. Use of memes such as Raptor Jesus and All Your Base Are Belong To Us is encouraged.
I occasionally see satirical or comedic fake news on the websites of real news organizations. Like “St. Paul Intelligencer’s Weekly Comedy Column with Bill Hicks” (title totally made up).
That will trip you up no matter how diligent you are, because those bylines aren’t very prominent. Thankfully it isn’t usually the big national news outlets, but more local ones.
That’s one reason Andy Borowitz flies under the radar so often. The New Yorker isn’t known as a satire magazine, but they run the Borowitz Report, which is satire.
You evidently didn’t read the title of the forum–General Questions. You didn’t add to the list asked for by the OP. You simply got in a political zinger the way you did in Great Debates.
No warning, but you’d better figure out how our site works rather quickly or you won’t be here.