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!
The idea behind this community should be that you think “wait, really? Is that serious or satire?” when you see the story. With all due respect, I disagree with some of the recent removals. Here are 4 examples:
Did Trump accuse other people of fascism? That’s absurd because he’s a fascist.
This is lunacy, why would a constitution not guarantee basic rights? Reads like a joke about conservatives.
This one is close but it’s still hilarious because it’s a “pot calls kettle black” situation. It does utilize antisemetic tropes though.
Really? The school should be doing the opposite. It reads like a joke mocking out of touch boomers.
Granted, that’s maybe 4 of the 25 most recent removed posts but I think they all have Onion-y elements. I’d just advise caution, especially when you’re adding new mods who might not have much experience. I’m not saying you’re doing a bad job moderating but I’d be careful of caving to light pressure from users. I get bad reports all the time (the majority of reports I get as a mod are not accurate).
Edit: the thing about satire and humor is that it is subjective. Not everyone will think a joke is funny and not everyone will think satire is funny because they’ll claim it’s too close to reality.
Edit again: just for transparency, 2 of the 4 I’ve shared are my posts. I’ve had other posts deleted that were appropriate deletions. I don’t want this to come off as me bitching about my posts getting deleted.
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.
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 does not require subversion of expectations
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.
Ok? That’s still not a subversion of expectations
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.
Subvert expectations /= saying something unexpected. If your point is the Onion has unexpected takes, then I’ll buy that.
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.
I don’t think any of those examples look like onion headlines. They’re ridiculous but not headlines they’d use.
And that pretty much proves my point about subjectivity. You don’t think so yet other commenters agreed with me. Everyone on here has a different hot take on what “Onion-y” means, largely based on their expectations, not reality. Moderators should lean towards leaving up posts because it’s such a subjective decision.
Honestly I’d rather mods set a bit of a higher bar, as it otherwise devolves into just a “weird news” community. I would prefer the community is more distinct. Headlines like “Trump says ridiculous thing” has a tendency to get upvoted from people just seeing the headline without considering whether it fits the community.
Again, I agree with the majority of the deletions. As I said, I pulled 4 of the most recent 20.
No offense intended here but it doesn’t look like many people agreed with you. I agree that it’s fairly subjective but the examples you gave were headlines we expect in 2024. They’re weird and sad but not absurd in today’s world
Communities with lax posting rules become homogenous with similar communities. It happens every time - I don’t want this place to become another catch-all weird news sub
Currently, I’m sitting at 10 upvotes and 9 downvotes. Again, my point is that there is no agreement. The votes, in my opinion, demonstrate that.
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Whereas I think every one of them looks oniony.
Maybe I’m just remembering too many Mad Magazines from back in the day, though…
I agree with you on the first 3. I can see why someone would disagree with #1, but the middle 2 are definitely very onion-y. They’re pretty similar to the “Putin wins 112% of the vote” headline on The Onion’s YouTube channel.
Did you really wonder if the first was satire? It is 0% surprising when Trump accuses others of what he does.
Did I wonder? No, it was on a legit news site. But Trump throwing a temper tantrum and calling other people names can be (and more importantly, has been) the topic of Onion articles
You’re the one who set that as the bar.
I don’t think anyone at this point would even do a double take to check “is this from a satire news source?” if they happened to see it shared in a context that makes the source not immediately known (e.g. on lemmy). At this point, The Onion headlines involving Trump tend to veer into total ridiculousness (Trump killing Cohen with a pen, bribing people with pb&j, etc). The only way you can do subtlety involving him is things that are totally out of character, like anything with self awareness or acknowledgement of rigging things in his favor.
That was one of mine (and I have another pending, as an Admin I get to see reports for users of my instance, including me) and it’s removal is fair enough as Mods have to be allowed to set the remit of their community and prune content accordingly. As long as they aren’t abusing their powers, which is not the case here.
As I’ve reported another post on here for rule 4 violation, it would also be a bit hypocritical of me to complain.
As another comment suggests, perhaps start c/notquitetheonion on here or (preferably) another general instance (spread the love and the load) for things that don’t quite make the grade here - if they are deleted an Admin can still fish them out of the Modlog and repost them if needed. It would likely help this community by diverting things that don’t meet the standard of inclusion.
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What a nice, concise way of letting us all know that you’re aggressively rude.
Except even in this comment section, I’ve got people saying how many of them are Onion-y.
Your comment just proves my point about subjectivity