Twilio Founder Buys Satire Site 'The Onion' (businessinsider.com) 30
Jeff Lawson, the cofounder of cloud computing company Twilio, appears to have purchased the satirical news website The Onion from G/O Media. Business Insider reports: A trust linked to Lawson is behind a San Francisco-based company called Global Tetrahedron, which shares the name of a fictional evil megacorporation in a long-running Onion gag, business records show. G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller confirmed the sale of The Onion to Global Tetrahedron in an email Thursday to staff, first reported by New York Times journalist Katie Robertson.
"This company is made up of four digital media veterans with a profound love for The Onion and comedy based content," Spanfeller wrote. "The site's new owners have agreed to keep The Onion's entire staff intact and in Chicago, something we insisted be part of the deal." When asked about the purchase, Lawson replied: "What's The Onion?" Then, "What's a Tetrahedron?"
"This company is made up of four digital media veterans with a profound love for The Onion and comedy based content," Spanfeller wrote. "The site's new owners have agreed to keep The Onion's entire staff intact and in Chicago, something we insisted be part of the deal." When asked about the purchase, Lawson replied: "What's The Onion?" Then, "What's a Tetrahedron?"
Wonder if it will be funny? (Score:1)
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Wonder if he can make it funny again. (Score:3, Insightful)
Two problems for the Onion of today, one of their making, one out of their hands:
1. To get an article published, the headline has to slay, and the quality of the article is way down the priority list. (This from a years ago article about how the writers room there works).
2. The world has gotten far weirder and dumber than it was when The Onion was a subway stop rag. Many times nowadays it's hard to tell whether a news story is legit or parody. ('US Senator thinks a woman can swallow a camera to do a gynecological exam'. 'Orange moron decides where hurricane should go with Sharpie', 'Inject bleach to ward off COVID'...)
I'm barely looking at The Onion at all these days because the humor is samey-samey due to 1., and edgeless due to 2.
Used to be my fave humor stop.
Re:Wonder if he can make it funny again. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wonder if he can make it funny again. (Score:4, Interesting)
this is absolutely the issue right now - the world has gotten so weird that the Onion can't even compete...
the other day my son came home from school with a homework assignment to write a satire/fake news article that was both "believable" and "obviously false" so to give him ideas i handed him my copy of the Onion's "book of known knowledge" ..
he managed to find a few items in it which turned out to be closer to predictions than they every should have been...
Re: Wonder if he can make it funny again. (Score:4, Insightful)
Vis:
https://www.theonion.com/fuck-... [theonion.com]
and:
https://gillette.com/en-us/pro... [gillette.com]
(Insert oblig "Idiocracy" comment here).
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oh the Gillette razor is a classic one...
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Lately The Onion has called a lot of the reporting around the situation in Gaza days or weeks before it happened.
It's funny, but it's also really biting satire that we need to help us keep perspective here. Their stuff about all the ways the media will find to avoid saying Israel killed anyone is a good example. Some of the headlines, about bullets "finding" their way into children's heads, are truly beyond parody, but we will need satire to remind us just how insane they actually are.
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To get an article published, the headline has to slay, and the quality of the article is way down the priority list.
I've always thought the funniest stuff in the Onion were the headlines without a corresponding article. Two favorites I can recall (from quite a few years ago):
"Roadkill Squirrel Remembered as Frantic, Indecisive"
"Like Boxes of Shit in Your House? Get a Cat"
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I've always thought the funniest stuff in the Onion were the headlines without a corresponding article.
Seriously, I've felt that way for about 15-20 years. Although they do sometimes keep it at a high level through the entire article [theonion.com].
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Maybe if these folks who bought it will try to inject some life into it? The headlines are still really good. e.g.: "The Onion Stands With Israel Because It Seems Like You Get In Less Trouble For That" (oct 13, 23). And you can't blame them, no one really reads past the headlines anymore (slash-geeks are outliers).
also (Score:3, Insightful)
There are way more sources of topical humor these days. Same reason late night TV has pretty much died. It used to be that if you were working at a factory in Iowa, if you wanted topical yuk-yuks you had David Letterman and theonion.com. These days, as soon as a news story hits, it's posted on Reddit and the comment section immediately produces every possible joke and then uses crowd-powered intelligence to upvote the best jokes. That's on top of Tiktok and Youtube creators, who often have staffs of their o
Re:also (Score:4, Informative)
+1 insightful. The other aspect is that The Onion has shifted towards political humour (usually left), possibly an indication of societal polarisation. This type of humour is more serious underneath which works against it. It's difficult to separate my own change and jadedness but I feel they used to take a more abstract and philosophical (or wacky) approach.
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On a discussion board I ran, I started a long running thread "Is this real, or The Onion?" challenging people to decide whether a headline was fictional.
It was hard. On one occasion it was both a real one and an Onion parody.
We are in Heinlein's Crazy Years, except he didn't foresee how weird.
Re: Wonder if he can make it funny again. (Score:1)
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Onion went politically correct about five years ago and all but died as a result. "Safe edgy" competes with mainstream, and that just doesn't work for Onion's niche.
If you still want anglo edgy counterculture predicting future insanity, Babylon Bee is probably the closest thing you'll get to Onion from over a decade ago. But it has all the weird hang ups of US Christians, since it's a Christian site. So not quite the same thing.
Well, I guess that's the end (Score:2)
Twilio ruins everything they touch.
They should celebrate... (Score:3)
Love Jeff, so maybe it would work (Score:2)
Bring back the Opinion Pieces, please! (Score:2)
missed an opportunity (Score:5, Funny)
If I was going to create a company to buy The Onion, I'd have named it Local Man. "Local Man buys Onion website."
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Should've been Florida man.
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