[META] Help! - eviltoast

Hi everyone,

News is weird. When it’s weird enough, it reads like articles from The Onion, and that’s what we’re all about. But as the community grows, there’s more and more content being posted here that just isn’t very Onion-y.

Jimmy Carter Becomes Second President Convicted Of Felony For Sticking Up Waffle House

Take a look at that headline from The Onion today. Or this one:

World Series Of Poker Entrants Play One Hand Face-Up So Everyone Can Learn Rules

Or this one:

New Hormone-Free IUD Wards Off Sperm With Steady Emission Of Police-Grade Pepper Spray

That’s the flavor we’re going for. We want real, credible news articles with headlines that read like they’re from The Onion.

This is not the community for:

  • Non-Onion-y political news (it’s gotta be absurd enough to look Onion-y)
  • Non-Onion-y regular news (it’s gotta be absurd enough to look Onion-y)
  • Satire (it’s gotta be actual news)
  • Fake news from fly-by-night “news” sites (again, it’s gotta be actual news)

That means not every ridiculous thing a politician does qualifies as appropriate content here.

I need your help, though… I need people to report content that just isn’t Onion-y, and I need people to try not to post non-Onion-y content in the first place.

Finally, I need help moderating, so this is also a formal call for new mods! Post below if you think you’re ready to take on moderation for one of the larger Lemmy communities! Tell me why you’d like to mod, and link to a news story from any time (it doesn’t have to be current) that has a properly Onion-y headline, to show that you really get this community.

I’ll pick two people to become new moderators for the community from participants. Good luck!

  • FlightyPenguin@lemmy.worldEnglish
    221·
    7 months ago

    A lot of these should be onion-y, but are not because the bar is so low. Trump being hypocritical? That’s to be expected. It can’t be onion-y because it doesn’t subvert expectations in any way.

    • jeffw@lemmy.worldEnglish
      41·
      7 months ago

      Do these onion articles subvert any expectations?

      https://www.theonion.com/advisors-assure-biden-this-will-blow-over-once-all-gaza-1851452315

      https://www.theonion.com/new-florida-law-requires-all-women-to-produce-3-healthy-1851482288

      https://www.theonion.com/trump-boys-attempt-to-bribe-juror-with-briefcase-full-o-1851509590

      The 3 topics are: Trump’s team engages in bribery, Flrodia attacks women, and Biden allows the Gaza genocide. How do those things subvert expectations? Quite the opposite, they play off the obvious

      Edit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satire

      Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of exposing or shaming the perceived flaws of individuals, corporations, government, or society itself into improvement

      Satire does not require subversion of expectations

      • FlightyPenguin@lemmy.worldEnglish
        22·
        7 months ago

        Biden doesn’t generally say the quiet part out loud, so that’s the joke. The specificity of the Florida law is what’s funny, not the fact that they make backwards, misogynist laws. The briefcase is also too on the nose. We know they bribe people, but that headline is slapstick comedy.

        It’s a fine line, admittedly, but those headlines do read like jokes to me.

          • FlightyPenguin@lemmy.worldEnglish
            31·
            7 months ago

            Expectation: “Biden funds Israeli war efforts” The subversion is that the Onion title reads between the lines, ignoring normal journalistic nothing-speak to say the quiet part out loud. These each hint at a bit of actual truth, but rather than simply being outlandish (which is our current baseline), these Onion titles all add something to name it now ridiculous. A bribe in child snacks? The bribe is what’s expected. The snacks are the unexpected, making the whole thing funny.

            • jeffw@lemmy.worldEnglish
              1·
              7 months ago

              Subvert expectations /= saying something unexpected. If your point is the Onion has unexpected takes, then I’ll buy that.

              • FlightyPenguin@lemmy.worldEnglish
                21·
                7 months ago

                It means that there’s an expected setup, then a twist. Trump’ sons engaged in bribery? Check. It’s easy to believe. The subversion happens when we get to the method of payment. We expected unmarked bills or a fraudulent wire transfer, but we got children’s snacks, which reframes the whole situation as if they’re two kids in a trenchcoat.

                If you remember Rudy Giuliani giving a speech at a landscaping company parking lot, you may remember hilarious news titles referencing the Four Seasons. They were particularly Onion-y, because we expected Rudy Giuliani to spew lies at a press conference, which often happens in hotel conference centers. The Four Seasons hotel would be a reasonable place for the whole thing to go down. He probably announced the location, then found out he couldn’t book the hall. Making lies about the election in the Four Seasons Landscaping parking lot across from a sex toy store? Hilarious. It sounds like comedy, but it’s reality.