It really got me this time. I read the comments before realizing the community
That’s one way to send the GOP running for the border.
As someone who grew up in Indiana, I believed it for a second or two
Almost bought it. If they had called it a new bill, “introduced” or some such, instead of “law” it would be perfectly feasible.
That’s antithetical to satire.
What y’all experienced, in this headline, is The Onion fucking up. They picked a lie that’s believable. Satire has to reach further than that, no matter how broken reality gets.
“Eating the onion” came from dipshits with zero media literacy believing the dumbest shit imaginable. Like “teenage girl to be tried as adult black man.” If a bunch of reasonably savvy people have to check whether a satirical headline is real - that headline sucks. It has failed, as satire.
Comedy is selecting a lie your audience knows is not true. If half of them are going ‘wait, really?’ - revise.
Trouble is, no matter how ridiculous the scenario they dream up, current reality still makes it entirely believable.
Reality has been busily satirizing itself for a decade. The Onion tries to keep up but real life is so embedded into clown world now that things that were obvious satire a year ago are now believable.
We are at that point now. That point where you can’t even make jokes anymore because there are no jokes stupider than what’s actually happening.
