People have a really hard time deciphering what is real news and what is obviously a joke. Who knew the unintended consequence of satirical news would be your grandma thinking the rapture happened. Whether it's a state of uncanny gullibility or just poor reading comprehension, a lot of mistaken people do not understand satire.
the onion
Satire can go over people's heads. Some folks seem to have a really hard time figuring out the difference between real news and obvious, absurd joke news. Sometimes it's funny when someone is ignorant enough to believe millions of people died on Black Friday, but when people refuse to see the jokes or think that it was made to deceive them, it's gets into the territory of "kind of upsetting."
It could be poor reading comprehension, gullibility, or just a failure to check sources, but many people have a problem with understanding satire. Even when it's not subtle, some folks really just miss the point of satire, or don't want to get it. Sometimes it's funny to see someone react with outrage over a fake story about NASA shooting a chimp into the sun. Other times it's just kind of pitiful, like when someone uses a joke as a source in an actual article.
There are more than a few satire websites out there, and there's a lot of softheaded nincompoops who believe it. Sometimes reading a joke headline can be confusing for a person who lacks critical thinking skills. Often they get angry because they don't understand what's going on. Sometimes, even more distressingly, they think that the headline is good news and share it with their friends. It's fun to laugh at their confusion, but eventually it just kind of gets sad.
What gets the blame for this? People's bad senses of humor? Poor reading comprehension skills? Whatever the reason, there are real idiots out there who, upon reading an obvious joke headline by a known satire website like The Onion, will assume it's true and pollute the comments section with their own moronic take on a fake situation. And man are these people fun to laugh at. For more here's another bunch of softheaded nincompoops who believed satire.
Before reacting to a headline, always check the source and make sure that you're not alerting everyone on your feed to the fact that you didn't understand an obvious joke. The Onion has been around for decades, but people still get duped by their joke headlines, like all the time.
These folks jumped the gun on whether the article they were reading was a joke or not. We get why they're so angry. Hell, we would be just as mad if we thought these headlines were real. The thing is, they're very obviously not. If you wanna see more people overreacting to more satire they didn't get, then check these out.
These angry mouth breathers got themselves livid over a whole bunch of NOTHING. Yes, they were quick to the draw when it came to calling out those iconically ridiculous, jokingly incendiary headlines that the Onion factory churns out. But they failed to slow down and recognize what was right in front of them-- a joke. And their failure to catch The Onion's jokes is our reward back at Fail Blog. If you want to check out more times people failed to discern The Onion's jokes, check here.
Just when you think people can't stoop low enough, they respond seriously to an Onion article. Is it a lack of critical thinking skills? Poor reading comprehension? Zero sense of humor? Bogus knowledge of the real world and an inability to distinguish between fact from fiction? Okay, yeah it's probably a combination of all of these. Anyway if you liked these then here's more times people assumed The Onion was trying to be a reputable News source.
