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Onion Story Gets Blown Out of Proportion 641

A 3-year-old Onion video titled "Martial Law Plans Revealed?" has swept across the internet recently, and taken the gullible along with it. The video has some preaching from the highest mountain top about the evils of a government turning fascist, and an equal number explaining until red in the face what The Onion is.

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Onion Story Gets Blown Out of Proportion

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  • by Rogerborg ( 306625 ) on Wednesday July 21, 2010 @11:29AM (#32979194) Homepage
    SOTP TEH PRESSAS!!!!1!

    I think this is the very definition of a Slow News Day.

  • by s73v3r ( 963317 ) <s73v3r@g[ ]l.com ['mai' in gap]> on Wednesday July 21, 2010 @11:29AM (#32979204)
    There should be a law. If you're to fucking stupid to realize what The Onion is, or that something came from The Onion, you don't get to comment about politics. Ever.
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by gurps_npc ( 621217 )
      Forget about commenting. Any idiot that saw this and thought it was true without checking up on the named Senator/Congressman (they gave a false name and false state) should be declared too stupid to be allowed to live outside an assisted living facility. At the very least, they need a legally appointed guardian to prevent them from giving their entire life savings away to the first con man that talks to them.
      • by spun ( 1352 ) <[moc.oohay] [ta] [yranoituloverevol]> on Wednesday July 21, 2010 @11:59AM (#32979650) Journal

        So what do we say about the idiots that saw the faked Shirley Sharrod video up on breitbart.com and rushed to denounce her and the NAACP as racist, when in fact the original video shows the exact opposite? And by idiots, I mean both the smug race baiting liars that put this up, the Obama administration that pressured for her resignation, and the NAACP itself for falling for a breitbart/Faux news lie in the first place and denouncing her. Brietbart is the guy who destroyed ACORN with false accusations and edited video, it's what he does, and yet, the idiots in the Obama administration and the NAACP fell for it. They walked right into his trap. See, if it never came out that the video was faked, it's a win if the administration and the NAACP do not react. But since they did react, why, simply reveal the video was fake and denounce them as idiots for falling for your trap.

        People will believe anything. If we had to appoint guardians for every nut-job that believed a patently obvious lie, there wouldn't be enough non-nut-job guardians to go around.

        • by bonch ( 38532 ) on Wednesday July 21, 2010 @12:43PM (#32980280)

          So what do we say about the idiots that saw the faked Shirley Sharrod video up on breitbart.com and rushed to denounce her and the NAACP as racist, when in fact the original video shows the exact opposite?

          We say that the NAACP now understands what it's like to be unfairly accused of racism, lose your job, and have nobody listen to your side of the story.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        > (they gave a false name and false state)

        I'm pretty sure Pennsylvania is a real state.

    • by Stele ( 9443 ) on Wednesday July 21, 2010 @11:48AM (#32979474) Homepage

      If you're to fucking stupid to realize what The Onion is, or that something came from The Onion, you don't get to comment about politics. Ever.

      I'd say the same about people who don't know when to use the word "to", "too", or "two".

    • by PPH ( 736903 ) on Wednesday July 21, 2010 @11:54AM (#32979572)

      And we turn your name over to the health care death panel.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by AkkarAnadyr ( 164341 )

        NEVER! The death panels should remain in corporate hands! We have so much data showing how well that has worked out - please don't fiddle with our gravy train^W^W^W a good thing!

  • When we already have a press like this? [dailycaller.com]

  • That's "Blue" (Score:3, Informative)

    by XanC ( 644172 ) on Wednesday July 21, 2010 @11:30AM (#32979212)

    You mean "blue in the face". Red would imply embarrassment. Those would be the other folks, not the ones getting blue in the face.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Oh sure, turn this into a Red State/Blue State Issue ;)

  • "Should event occur in urban areas.... Jesus.... (haunted) That's.. classified."

    Seriously, people are complete and total retards. And I mean that in the 3rd grade definition, not in any clinical sense. This should not be news to anyone, especially those of us who've been kicking around the internet for more than a couple of weeks.

  • Faux News (Score:4, Funny)

    by Foofoobar ( 318279 ) on Wednesday July 21, 2010 @11:33AM (#32979264)
    I believe they mispronounced the french when naming their news channel but you get the idea.
  • It's War of the Worlds 2010.
    • by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *

      Heh our posts are a minute apart. Slashdot has a hive-mind too, apparently.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      It's War of the Worlds 2010.

      And I've wondeded whether the reaction to the War of the Worlds broadcast made people in the US, at the time, more skeptical of radio broadcasts, thus less susceptable to broadcast propaganda than those in other countries (or audiences), and thus led to the US neutrality in WW II until the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

      One thing the reaction to this item shows: The current government has some people prepared to believe that martial law and fascism are on their agenda.

      Not sure if the r

  • After all, America is the country that was sure it was being attacked by Martians only a couple generations ago, when Orson Welles did his "War of the Worlds" radio show.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 21, 2010 @11:40AM (#32979348)

    I think we ignore The Onion as a serious news source at our peril [theonion.com], especially now that mainstream media has all but abandoned serious reporting themselves. Imagine what could have been avoided if people had listened in 2001. It's like their reporters had used a fricking time machine!

  • by jdgeorge ( 18767 ) on Wednesday July 21, 2010 @11:40AM (#32979374)

    ...remember what they said about Gillette in February 2004 [theonion.com]? And then what happened in September, 2005 [cnn.com]?

    (Now let's watch as The Onion replaces the writings of Nostradamus as the road map to an apocalyptic future.)

  • For a follow-up (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 21, 2010 @11:41AM (#32979398)

    Try citing The Onion AV Club as a source on Wikipedia. No one will believe you. Condescendingly, they'll explain that The Onion is satire.

  • The original video: (Score:5, Informative)

    by slagheap ( 734182 ) on Wednesday July 21, 2010 @11:44AM (#32979416)
    is here [theonion.com].
  • by gestalt_n_pepper ( 991155 ) on Wednesday July 21, 2010 @11:45AM (#32979424)

    Moving on, our next topics are Santa Clause, Jesus, the Tooth Fairy, and honesty in government.

  • by amstrad ( 60839 ) on Wednesday July 21, 2010 @11:48AM (#32979476)

    Poe's Law points out that it is hard to tell parodies of fundamentalism (or, more generally, any crackpot theory) from the real thing, since they both seem equally insane. Conversely, real fundamentalism can easily be mistaken for a parody of fundamentalism.

    http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Poe's_Law [rationalwiki.org]

    • by twoallbeefpatties ( 615632 ) on Wednesday July 21, 2010 @12:15PM (#32979878)
      There's something amazing about invoking Poe's Law here, similar to the number of far-rightists who think that Stephen Colbert is secretly a real conservative who's just pretending to play a fake one so that he has a chance to mock liberals - that even when you make it clear up front that you have a parody, some fundamentalists will still miss or ignore that part. Apparently, there's nothing you can do to get 100% certain with parody.
      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by Jay L ( 74152 ) *

        Apparently, there's nothing you can do to get 100% certain with parody.

        Yeah, for 100% you really want CRC or some sort of forward error correction.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by JSBiff ( 87824 )

      I'd just like to point out that this applies equally to the extreme ends of any ideology.

      Because parody attempts to take any idea to an absurd extreme, it's difficult to distinguish parody from the extreme camp of any ideology.

  • ...That you can find here. [theonion.com]
  • Oh, Dizzam (Score:4, Funny)

    by Aphoxema ( 1088507 ) on Wednesday July 21, 2010 @11:51AM (#32979510) Journal

    Onion news ISN'T REAL!? This sets me back on some things I believe to be fact... oh dear...

  • by Dexter Herbivore ( 1322345 ) on Wednesday July 21, 2010 @11:56AM (#32979602) Journal
    Is it just me, or does that sound like an awesome description of Z-Day?
  • by Techranman ( 1352375 ) on Wednesday July 21, 2010 @12:00PM (#32979666)
    ...is a five minute conversation with the average voter.” Winston Churchill
  • by kroyd ( 29866 ) on Wednesday July 21, 2010 @04:37PM (#32983586)
    http://www.dailypaul.com/node/57427 [dailypaul.com]

    Just that makes this pretty big news I think..

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