I don’t think any of the articles that grandparent linked are really the most exemplary Onion articles. The onion is really at its best when it manages to nail it exactly right. Sometimes they are just so perfectly in touch with cultural zeitgeist it’s uncanny. Here are two of the most memorable ones in recent memory:
The onion has always been political commentary. In my opinion, it is some of the most impactful, even to this day. Every time there is a mass shooting, the onion reposts the same article — linked above. All they do is edit the time and place. They also bump every other article they published to the front page.
It's incredible commentary on the fact these things keep happening in completely predictable ways.
> ‘The Onion’ Stands With Israel Because It Seems Like You Get In Less Trouble For That
This is a recent Onion classic.
The thing about the Onion is, once you’ve got a great headline - and maybe a photo, which will usually be a head shot - the text of the article sometimes seems largely superfluous. They actually ought to be doing better in the age of Twitter and so on, but it didn’t work out that way.
I’ve felt for a long time that The Onion is the reincarnation of Voltaire: savage, subtle, clever, culturally relevant, slightly undersold in its time. They will be studied in history books, or whatever the equivalent of books become. Even if you don’t agree with the political spin, you cannot discount the beauty of how they took such a common political phrase and turned it on its head like that.
I happen to enjoy the content itself, even if it's all just riffing on the joke on the headline. But I'm a big fan of snark in general.
Also, I'm not 100% sure, but perhaps there are some SEO boosts from having long form article content that wouldn't be gained from just having a title and a blurb (though they do also do those very short form articles as well, where it's a few sentences with the headline)
Okay, I chuckled at the Ted Kaczynski signature, aka The Unabomber.
I assumed all the other "board member signatures" were similarly infamous bad guys but I can't figure out what they all are and when I search on Steve Hannah, he apparently actually was the CEO of The Onion at one time.
I agree with some of their points about it being a conflict going back hundreds of years. I personally think it's inevitable that war broke out given how psycho controlling Isreal is about Gaza's water supply.
I still probably am not the target audience for The Onion and won't really understand a lot of it. I was full-time homemaker a lot of years for an American woman my age. I did well in school. I value HN and have participated here a lot, but have zero friends, professional contacts etc via HN.
I don't generally "go along to get along." I try to avoid social friction by other means and the result appears to be I don't ever really fit in anywhere because I'm not willing to mouth empty agreement with the group consensus.
And, I mean, there's likely other reasons I fail to fit in anywhere but I strongly suspect that's a really large factor.
Publisher Emeritus, T. Herman Zweibel, writes frequent editorials, growing more and more erratic until he's removed from power by the board of directors in the 1950s.
There's not any correlation between fitting the standard HN mold and liking The Onion. I'm a barista who just checks in here for the marginal stuff outside the tech professional centered stuff, and I'm a big fan of The Onion.
Honestly, I think the disconnect is that you pay very close attention while you read, while the Onion's style caters more to a quick glance-through. They rarely have every point nailed down completely, because they're expecting you to just be moving on quickly anyway.
As a Canuck, US politics is typically indecipherable, eh! Most news makes no sense, until I found The Onion. Now you are telling me, you bunch of hosers made it all up!
Signed "Bob Jenkins, Canadian Minister of National Affairs"
"You made it all up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!”, Charlton Heston, a Great Canadian
https://www.theonion.com/no-way-to-prevent-this-says-only-na...
https://www.theonion.com/the-onion-stands-with-israel-becaus...