this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2024
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Not The Onion

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Welcome

We're not The Onion! Not affiliated with them in any way! Not operated by them in any way! All the news here is real!

The Rules

Posts must be:

  1. Links to news stories from...
  2. ...credible sources, with...
  3. ...their original headlines, that...
  4. ...would make people who see the headline think, “That has got to be a story from The Onion, America’s Finest News Source.”

Comments must abide by the server rules for Lemmy.world and generally abstain from trollish, bigoted, or otherwise disruptive behavior that makes this community less fun for everyone.

And that’s basically it!

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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!

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 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.