Splitsider

Thursday, September 29th, 2011
Manufactured Outrage
5

Yet Again, The Onion Makes a Joke, and Humorless Idiots Complain

by | September 29th, 2011

This morning, The Onion tweeted this: "BREAKING: Witnesses reporting screams and gunfire heard inside Capitol building." There was no context, no link, and no hashtag. But if you've followed The Onion's Twitter feed for a while, you probably could tell that this was the start of a day-long running joke centered around a couple of articles. They did something similar in May, when they tweeted throughout the day about a gigantic Bin Laden destroying New York and Washington.

And it was made clear within a few minutes, as followup tweets revealed the joke to be about Congress taking schoolchildren hostage. But not before a bunch of people got outraged!

It's not super clear why what The Onion is doing is so bad. The Newsweek Tumblr tut-tutted "Just stop, Onion. Tweeting a faux-breaking news report of 'screams and gunfire' inside the Capitol, especially on a day that brings more details about a homegrown terror threat targeting D.C. with drone-delivered C-4, is just too real a threat to spoof." So, joking about terrorism is totally off-limits, then? Why haven't you complained about the dozens and dozens of other Onion terrorism spoofs in the past?

People seem to take issue with the straightforward nature of that first tweet. The Capitol Police are investigating, apparently, but that should be a pretty short investigation. Really, this is the fucking Onion, people. You think they're suddenly breaking news about a terror attack? When has The Onion ever, ever reported real news? And since when has The Onion ever shied away from controversial topics? Remember, this is the publication that famously responded to 9/11 comedically before anyone else. Getting mad or confused about what The Onion does puts you in some pretty embarrassing company.

So to people who are mad about literally nothing, about a joke you didn't get, from a source that has pushed boundaries many times before: go manufacture some outrage about something else.

Tags:

idiots, politics, terrorism, the onion

  • Charlie Fan@twitter

    I think it makes it a thousand times funnier that people take offense to these kind of articles from The Onion. I agree with you totally that people should never take the Onion seriously but I'm glad they do because it allows me to enjoy it that much more.

  • http://twitter.com/joshung Joshua Ungerleider

    At least this one isn't people thinking the news is real, just that they think its in poor taste.

    This one is weird though, if you follow the Onion, you must know they are a satire site, and I imagine aren't one to be easily offended by this stuff. Perhaps somebody retweeted one of these, thinking it was funny, and one of their followers took it the wrong way?

  • SpyMagician

    The first tweet was: “BREAKING: Witnesses reporting screams and gunfire heard inside Capitol building.”

    The 11 minutes late this tweet showed up: “BREAKING: Capitol building being evacuated. 12 children held hostage by group of armed congressmen.”

    So basically anyone dumb enough to not realize the newspaper is a satirical publication was dumb enough not to wait for other tweets. Fairly astonishing. Because this has got to be the 100% fastest time something The Onion wrote went from published to misunderstanding to ninny-party ever!

    New milestone!

  • Cecelia Holland@facebook

    basically you need to have a certain level of intelligence to have a sense of humor

  • Sarah Rogers@facebook

    People arent upset because they're offended, they think its in bad taste because its dumb- very different. Its almost 2012, nothing offends us anymore. The Onion seems like its funny only on occasion/ accident. Their tv show on IFC is just awful….Its either too obnoxious or too pre-concceieved and calculating…

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