The Onion has been around for ages. It’s older than Facebook. Older than YouTube. Almost older than the internet. And yet. Some people still don’t understand that it’s satire.
There’s a great online law – Poe’s Law – that says good satire will be indistinguishable from truth. Literally Unbelievable is a demonstration of the power of Poe’s Law. Capturing Facebookers who don’t know the difference between the Onion and real news.
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At a church I used to go to we had a full page of the bulletin devoted to how JK Rowling was an evil Satanist who was training kids to be devil-worshippers, and it contained an attributed quote from The Onion.
I went and told the minister that it was a comedy site, and he didn’t care.
ARRGHH!