HILARIOUS! When people mistake "The Onion" for real news

[eissa]

Is it me, or does it appear that the most gullible (and those with the most atrocious grammar) belong to a certain party?

http://thoughtcatalog.com/2013/the-35-best-times-someone-on-facebook-thought-the-onion-was-real/

[deutsey]

1. These are hilarious

There's an entire website dedicated to capturing FB posts where people mistake Onion articles for the real thing:

http://literallyunbelievable.org/

[progressoid]

7. I want to laugh but

reading those comments makes me kind of sad.

Good grief people.

[deutsey]

8. Yeah, I do veer back and forth between laughter and despair when I read these n/t

[BlueJazz]

30. I like the "Wolf attacks are leading cause of death" ...and then the guy gets pissed about it. !!

...and starts cussing up a storm..

[deutsey]

40. That was one of the laughs for me.

[Little Star]

2. No comment....

I've done it myself sometimes.

[Enrique]

3. wait, i don't understand...

there is no Nicholas Cage? I mean as a real human?

[dbackjon]

20. I am confused by that as well

Certainly it is a robot programmed to act horrid.

[RevStPatrick]

34. What's REALLY funny to me...

...is that "the man inside the Nicholas Cage costume" is actually my friend Andrew!

He also happens to be the actor who played Wormser in Revenge of the Nerds...

[FSogol]

4. K & R. n/t

[Marrah_G]

5. Ahhh FB.... shining a spotlight on the stupid.

[eissa]

6. You mean "stupied" nt

[sufrommich]

9. lol, " The Onion is a joke newspaper "

" OK, well that's your opinion"

[sakabatou]

10. Ha!

[GiaGiovanni]

11. To be fair, some of those stories are no longer impossible; irony really is dead

Although people should know that there are no dance moves to the National Anthem.

[Shrike47]

26. Maybe not in YOUR neighborhood...

[HughBeaumont]

12. These people vote.

These are the types of people that put guys like Louie Gohmert and Jim Inhofe in Washington.

IQ points subtract with each entry read . . . especially with the poster who misspells "stupid" twice, and with two different versions of that error, no less.

[RZM]

37. I'm not so sure about that

I suspect a lot of those people at the link are relatively young. Of course I don't know that for sure since the pics were hidden.

But I'd also bet that plenty of them aren't even registered to vote.

[RedCappedBandit]

13. I seriously hope some of those responses are just jokes as well

Wow

[sufrommich]

14. Especially the people freaking out over the

" massive star in center of solar system causing heat wave".

[RedCappedBandit]

15. Regarding Stephen Hawking...

"If I were him I'd be studying more the bible...."

That level of ignorance is hard to fathom.

[eissa]

16. That one was my favorite along with

Abortionplex. Doesn't that place sound so cool?! Grab some coffee, get a nice mani-pedi, have an abortion, and wrap it up with a nice lunch.

[sufrommich]

18. Did you notice that one of the guys posting the abortionplex

joke as a real news item is a republican congressman from Louisiana ?

[eissa]

19. Yes! Didn't surprise me at all

First, as we all know, republicans are stupid (sorry, I meant stupied.) Secondly, I remember that rumor and recall A LOT of right-wingers repeating it as actual fact. Amazing.

[ellie]

17. Thank you!

That was awesome!

[azurnoir]

21. oh those are funny and sort of disturbing too

but nearly as disturbing as when I read a headline here and think that's got to be the onion and it turns out to be real

[Bernardo de La Paz]

22. Put his name for searches: John Fleming, Republican, Louisiana congressman

Put his name into posts and especially headings for searches: John Fleming, Republican, Louisiana congressman.

That way his enormous stupidity will get more notice as it rises to the top, the same way Santorum got associated with the frothy mixture, but for real.

Specifically, John Fleming on abortion, got taken in by an obviously over-the-top Onion satire and posted a link to it on his facebook page with a comment that shows he believed the article about the $8 billion (with b) abortion complex. He wrote: "More on Planned Parenthood, abortion by the wholesale". Note in the English language we don't write "by the wholesale"; we write "by wholesale" or simply "wholesale".

Someone with more intelligence wrote a comment "How exactly did you get elected", which is an excellent question.



That would John Fleming, Louisiana Republican congressman. Fleming (R) Louisiana.

[HughBeaumont]

38. Read the rest of the entries. That's how he got elected.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

23. The best are deadpan: "Scientists trace heat wave to star at center of solar system".

But I have one question: Are you sure they are not right about Justin Bieber?

[Posteritatis]

35. The star one's probably my favorite Onion article in awhile. (nt)

[Phillyindy]

24. Want a laugh?

Subscribe to various tea party and right wing websites like Human Events. In between their daily articles about Obama loving terrorists and hating babies, you'll get the most hilarious "sponsor" emails from their advertisers selling everything from magical beans that cure cancer to survival packs for the coming apocalypse to a never ending barrage of "secret get rich quick" scams.

These people on the right are fucking idiots, every last one of them.

[Jerry442]

25. LOL. If I were a writer for the Onion...

...and it was my job to write articles more absurd than reality the way it is these days, I'd have ulcers, high blood pressure and I'd be eating Prozacs out of a bowl with a spoon.

[Posteritatis]

36. I've always thought the person who manages their inbox has the best job in the world. (nt)

[Shrike47]

27. How come we never saw Obama and BinLadin at the same time? Huh???

[arely staircase]

28. that's a big bowl of funny nt

[Just Saying]

29. I'm dying laughing at this.

I love the wolf attacks and the person who just will not believe The Onion is fake. Oh and the little girls freaking out over Bieber.

[mstinamotorcity2]

31. Its the

repug way. Life in the bubble.

[Fumesucker]

32. And then there were the DUers who took this seriously

[tblue37]

43. Oh, my! nt

[AndyA]

33. Easy to see how so many fall for Rush, Bill-O, Sean, and the rest.

The Onion is pretty clever, though. Sometimes the articles are so well written you almost forget where it's from.

[Egalitarian Thug]

39. And the inverse. More than once I've thought I was reading something from The Onion only

to find that no, this is a real story...

[red dog 1]

41. K&R....Thanks eissa for posting this.

FaceBook,
Where gullible users believe "The Onion" articles such as :

"Scientists trace heat wave to massive star at center of solar system"
"Wolf attacks are leading cause of death"
"Dick Van Dyke Finally Confesses to Zodiac Killings"
"Judge Rules White Girl Will Be Tried As Black Adult"
(The court ruled a white teen will be tried as a 200 lb. black man)

Facebook
Where a gullible GOP Tea Party Congressmen named John Fleming (R-LA) believes
"Planned Parenthood Opens $8 billion dollar "Abortionplex"


And, (sadly, NOT from "The Onion&quot , Facebook, which states that
"Sharing any graphic content for sadistic pleasure is forbidden."
Yet, animal rights activists have been trying to remove Facebook sites that have the clear and intentional purpose of "enjoying" abusive behavior, including graphic content:
"Skinning Animals Alive"
"Inserting Fireworks Into Live Animals"
"Strangling Live Animals"
"Sexually Abusing Animals"
"Provoking Others To Harm Animals"
and "Animal Hate Sites"

At the Care 2 Petition Site, you can sign a petition to Facebook:
"Remove Facebook Sites That Promote Intentional Animal Abuse"
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/722/714/330/remove-facebook-sites-that-promote-intentional-animal-abuse/

[tblue37]

42. The best ones are the ones who argue with the

posters who try to explain to them that The Onion is satirical and fictitious.

The fools respond with "That's your opinion!" or squawk that the MSM never bother to use stories from The Onion, as though their failure to do so is evidence that they are suppressing the "real" news because of a liberal bias.

Even when the joke is explained to them, they have to double down and insist on believing that the bizarre stories are true.

I love the comments from those who accept the story that our heat wave is caused by the presence of a massive star at the center of our solar system.

Of course our sun is precisely that--a star at the center of our solar system that is directly responsible for a lot of our planet's heat. But the posters assume this means that there is actually a second star among the planets that is responsible for how hot it is, and some brag about having captured an image of that extra star!

For some reason, I just flashed back to an essay written for an English 101 class I was teaching back in the mid 1970s. The student wrote, "The English language was invented by the kings and queens of England so that they could communicate with the captains of their ships at sea."

When people think that way, it can be difficult to get past such beliefs.

When I was young and naive, I thought that many people must be sandbagging--i.e., pretending to be less informed and less thoughtful than they really were. I just couldn't believe that such ignorance was as pervasive as it seemed to be. But now, at the age of 63, I have come to accept the wisdom of the old saying that the worst problems are caused not by what people don't know, but by what they think they know that just ain't so.