2023 WebMD Wrapped | Hacker News Reader

2023 WebMD Wrapped

mcsweeneys.net

128 pointsohjeez16 comments

>You truthfully replied that it was just your lack of sleep that was to blame, but you conveniently left out the fact that your sleeplessness was the result of staying up all night researching Mad Cow Disease. Yikes!

This hits too close to home!

I'm more looking forward to my 2023 WebMIDI Wrapped.

McSweeney's and The Beaverton (Canada) are doing satire better than the Onion these days

Haven’t seen The Beaverton. Thanks for turning me onto it.

If you haven’t heard the This American Life episode where they go behind the scenes at The Onion’s writer room, it’s worth checking out. A ten minute discussion over the precise wording of “Thirsty Mayor Drinks Town’s Entire Water Supply” and what makes it funny… amazing to realise how truly obsessive and technically capable they are.

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/348/tough-room The one female voice later became writer/director for television, Megan Ganz.

I also recommend the Babylon Bee, leans conservative but funny as hell. It started as religious satire and they still kill at that.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/06/babylon-bee-sati...

> Even so, the phenomenon of audiences and even news sources mistaking news satire for reality is well-documented. What is more, a study from the Ohio State University suggested that conservatives are more likely to believe Babylon Bee stories are real than liberals are to believe stories from the Onion, when the indicators of satire are removed in both cases.

The Bee's writers would likely argue that this is because the political left, and the world in general, are getting more ridiculous each day. This is the premise behind their "Book of Prophecy" [0] and their "Not the Bee" sister site [1].

[0]: https://babylonbee.com/book-of-prophecy

[1]: https://notthebee.com

Conservative satirists attempting to mock "only teaching unproblematic history" is rich.

Are there any headlines or articles from the Babylon Bee that you think of as being classics of the genre? I’ve looked occasionally in the past and always found it to be painful. “CNN PURCHASES INDUSTRIAL SIZED DRYER TO SPIN NEWS BEFORE BROADCAST” feels one step removed from FW: FW: FW: email threads from the 90s, whereas McSweeney’s, The Onion, and even absurdist sites like Clickhole play with the form as much as taking a position.

They have video skits (for example [0]), and occasionally articles in the form of a poll or quiz. There is also the "Book of Prophecy" [1]. But otherwise, the form is pretty standard I suppose. Definitely not as playful with form as, say, McSweeny's.

The jokes are hit or miss, especially if you don't share their politics I suppose—no different than The Onion in that respect. But they do regularly poke fun at their own side, and have nonpolitical satire as well. Their "Family" category is pretty good IMO: https://babylonbee.com/news/categories/family

[0] https://youtube.com/watch?v=HlDWzN6TW5Y

[1] https://babylonbee.com/book-of-prophecy

A political classic - "PA Senate Candidate Reminds Everyone That 'Fetterman' Is The Name Of The Doctor Who Created Him, Not His Actual Name".

A religious classic - "Brutal: Other Disciples Gift Peter A Rooster-Crowing Alarm Clock"

https://theneedling.com/ is excellent for Seattle fake news.

The Hard Times is also great

Meanwhile McSweeneys can't tell me what material their metal mugs are made of

Did you decide you really needed to know after researching rare heavy metal poisoning symptoms on WebMD?

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