Everyone has that one Facebook friend — you know the one. The one that sends us into giggling fits of superiority when s/he unintentionally posts articles from The Onion to Facebook as if they were fact.
“This is a movie for children!” they rage, linking to an article about the Ninja Turtles’ CGI-spun genitals. SMH, am I right?
Well, now those poor souls could be spared the embarrassment that is believing fake news, as Facebook is testing a new “Satire” tag — an occurrence that prompted The Onion to respond in characteristically tongue-in-cheek fashion with an article titled “Area Facebook User Incredibly Stupid.”
“Describing him as frequently frustrated and overwhelmed, sources confirmed Monday that local Facebook user Michael Huffman is incredibly stupid,” The Onion wrote. “‘I need stuff easy,’ said the absolute dipsh–, adding that he finds many things confusing, and that those things must be changed so that they make sense to him.”
“At press time, someone had reportedly fixed everything for the goddamn imbecile,” the piece concludes.
Apparently, users had, indeed, been asking for such a feature — likely not as hilariously as the nonexistent Huffman, however.
Mashable reported this past weekend that the new proposed Facebook feature would add a tag reading “[Satire]” to articles found in the related articles unit in our News Feeds.
“This is because we received feedback that people wanted a clearer way to distinguish satirical articles from others in these units,” a Facebook representative told Mashable.
Although it may be obvious to most of us that Onion articles are, in fact, satirical, the feature could be helpful when it comes to other, lesser-known satire sites. Mashable pointed out that some outlets, such as The Washington Post, have picked up stories from satire sites in the past.
Brenna Ehrlich
No Comments