Comments on: Making New Fake News

Making New Fake News

Robot Johnny — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 17:46:17 -0800

, and in the process offered their full news archives from 1996 to the present available online for free. The Onion A.V. Club also finds a new home.

By: mathowie

mathowie — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 17:49:34 -0800

I saw the announcement of a new design this morning and couldn't wait to see it and then was totally underwhelmed, especially considering the guy from subtraction did it, but after reading his post shortly after, it all makes sense. I remember back in 98 or so, I would regularly get list mail or mail from relatives that "fell" for an onion joke, thinking it was a real newspaper site. I suspect that might happen once again with some regularity and I have come to love the new straight-faced design. I guess I was expecting it to look slick and designy, like the AV Club site, but it works really well as a news site parody.

By: VanRoosta

VanRoosta — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 17:52:29 -0800

It seems like it's just designed to expose you to more ads.

By: mullingitover

mullingitover — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 17:52:31 -0800

I'm thrilled to see the Smoove B archives are back up. My productivity is now plummeting.

By: mr_roboto

mr_roboto — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 17:53:28 -0800

Why are the section headings all implemented as flash objects?

By: kyleg

kyleg — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 18:00:45 -0800

It's about time they reopened their archives. I remember many wasted hours reading those in high school. Back when they were always funny.

By: leapingsheep

leapingsheep — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 18:03:36 -0800

I enjoyed the announcement email: A Message from The Onion Board of Editors Dear Reader, Since 1931, it has been Onion, Inc.'s corporate policy to avoid written or verbal contact with the common reader. Our bylaws clearly state that exposure to the masses undermines our journalistic impartiality. It is with great repugnance, therefore, that we communicate this necessary information directly to you this Monday, August 29, 2005. As of today, all Onion Premium accounts have been terminated, and the service itself has been deleted from the Internet. As of Wednesday morning, a new ad-enriched web site will debut, delighting readers like yourself with its winning combination of hard-hitting news and cutting-edge corporate sponsorship. Sincerely, The Onion Board Of Editors P.S. Our undersecretaries have informed us that some of you have written confused and windy "e-mails" requesting "refunds" on the "remaining portions" of your Premium subscriptions. While we voted unanimously in favor of taking this matter to the highest courts in the land, our legal department is advising that we settle your account in the coming weeks.

By: kirkaracha

kirkaracha — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 18:23:57 -0800

My all-time favorite is Roof on Fire Claims Lives of 43 Party People. (Their search isn't very good; this article wasn't in the first 60 results for "roof fire party people.")

By: kirkaracha

kirkaracha — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 18:31:24 -0800

Why are the section headings all implemented as flash objects? They're using Scalable Inman Flash Replacement (sIFR) to replace HTML headings with Flash. It's so they can use the typeface they want for their design without having to produce graphics.

By: anarcation

anarcation — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 18:32:39 -0800

The site is annoyingly ugly with the little 'adblock' tabs (from the Firefox extension adblock) coming off of every Flash element. It almost makes me wish tables were still the standard for web design. Almost.

By: cmicali

cmicali — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 18:32:45 -0800

My favorite: Fuck Everything, We're Doing Five Blades I almost bought a subscription just for this article.

By: zardoz

zardoz — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 18:45:19 -0800

Yeah, I like the Five Blades one, too. I've wanted to find this one for the longest time. It reminds me of my best friend. And a big thumbs up to the makeover. Even after they moved to New York and went big time (and sold out! *ducks*), the site design has always been quite lame. This is quite an improvement, especially the A.V. Club.

By: odinsdream

odinsdream — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 18:46:46 -0800

Why are the section headings all implemented as flash objects? Damned sIFR, my friend. Here's a previous discussion on the ~~pros and~~ cons.

By: smackfu

smackfu — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 18:49:10 -0800

Aha, it's intentionally sucky. I wondered why people were linking to this fancy new design.

By: jepler

jepler — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 18:57:08 -0800

Luckily, you can kill the sIFR with Firefox's Adblock extension. Just block this URL: http://www.theonion.com/content/themes/onion/scripts/sifr.js After doing that and reloading, everything moved around a pixel or so, but more importantly the suck of sIFR and the Adblock tabs all disappeared.

By: rolypolyman

rolypolyman — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 19:01:16 -0800

Whoa -- Midstate Office Supply! This was linked to off their Herbert Kornfeld page. Bad ass! Full refund within 60 days o' purchase. Box it up like you got it originally so it ain't all fucked up when it come back 2 us. Only we ain't gonna be 2 pleased y'all wasted our time with this pussy returnin' shit. Tha H-Dog gonna remember that.

By: carter

carter — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 19:06:31 -0800

Yes! Owls are assholes!

By: Civil_Disobedient

Civil_Disobedient — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 19:10:44 -0800

Here's a previous discussion on the ~~pros and~~ cons. That brought back some wonderful memories. Hey zeek, this horse ain't dead yet!

By: reklaw

reklaw — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 19:15:12 -0800

jepler: Luckily, you can kill the sIFR with Firefox's Adblock extension. Just block this URL: http://www.theonion.com/content/themes/onion/scripts/sifr.js Going a little further, you can block sIFR stupidity across the entire interweb by adding this URL to AdBlock: */sifr.js And that's the end of that, thank goodness.

By: yhbc

yhbc — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 19:23:51 -0800

As long as I can once again read "Our Long National Nightmare of Peace and Prosperity is Finally Over" - for free, no less - they can use whatever interface they want.

By: Gamblor

Gamblor — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 19:33:13 -0800

Fantastic. Now the whole world will know: You must have my seed!

By: fungible

fungible — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 19:34:44 -0800

I hope AV Club is still in the print version. That's the best part. The rest, well, it's only good for one or two chuckles a week, max. And that's on a good week.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 19:47:28 -0800

Free archives: good. Now you can read the stories from back when they were actualy funny. Like 1999. The new design is very ugly.

By: snsranch

snsranch — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 19:52:46 -0800

The onion sucks, but I check in every week without fail. The AV Club rules, but they are constantly Forcing me to watch reviewed movies that my better judgement advises me against; Garden State, Broken Flowers, etc. etc. I did like The Life Aquatic, but I guess I was the only one. Oh, well. Savage Love rules too. It's down-right nasty at times (a good thing) and VERY informative.

By: Gamblor

Gamblor — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 19:55:34 -0800

Ok, I rescind my praise. You've all convinced me: Change is bad, and everything used to be better back in the good old days. Does anyone in here ever have anything to say that isn't bitchy? Are your arms being twisted to read a free publication?

By: delmoi

delmoi — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 19:56:50 -0800

I did like The Life Aquatic, but I guess I was the only one. Oh, well. That movie ruled! Garden State Seemed like scientolgest propaganda to me.

By: yhbc

yhbc — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 19:57:26 -0800

Hmm. They seem to have somehow mixed a lot of their later Iraq war stories into the edition that should have been the first one after 9/11, so the two events now appear to be somehow connected in the readers' minds. Coincidence? Or conspiracy????

By: yhbc

yhbc — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 20:00:48 -0800

See? There's the article I was searching for - the "God Angrily Clarifies 'Do Not Kill' Rule" one - and it says it is from issue 37-34. The link to issue 37-34, however, takes you to the Iraq page I linked to above. * goes for tinfoil *

By: mathowie

mathowie — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 20:04:44 -0800

Why on earth is anyone annoyed by the flash headline fonts? They are so seamless that I didn't know what you guys were complaining about -- they look so much like images. I think they look great, though the slight refresh-display reminds you they are there.

By: Roach

Roach — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 20:08:48 -0800

When I try to access the A.V. Club, I get a "Forbidden: You don't have permission to access / on this server" message.

By: rafter

rafter — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 20:11:15 -0800

Here's the one that's had me on the edge of registering for Premium.

By: odinsdream

odinsdream — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 20:12:42 -0800

mathowie; try looking at it with flash-block enabled on firefox. You'll see a page of white blocks with the flash logo in the middle. In this case, it does not automatically fail to text mode, as it should. To read the headline, you have to click each box, but each box could be an ad. Further, the text they chose isn't some fancy script font, it might as well be Helvetica or something similar enough that it doesn't make a difference. Thirdly, it slows things down for no good reason on browsers that do display it. For more, just see the previous thread I linked to. One of the developers (of mikeindustries) stops by to share his side of things, so it's probably a better source of information than rehashing the debate here.

By: yhbc

yhbc — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 20:15:08 -0800

* patiently folds tinfoil, waits for the techie-type people to tell me it's just a database issue * but - what if the techie-types are in on it!?!

By: rafter

rafter — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 20:17:30 -0800

I don't like that they renamed "What do you think?" to "American Voices." Weak.

By: orange swan

orange swan — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 20:55:27 -0800

I just stayed up too late reading the Jean Teasdale homepage. Jean is my favourite thing about the Onion. She's so deeply sad and pathetic that she makes me feel better about me. So I loved her site. Her online resume and fan fiction are just a few of the highlights.

By: Rev. Syung Myung Me

Rev. Syung Myung Me — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 20:55:47 -0800

Yeah -- I'm... not thrilled with the redesign of either, really. I don't like how the AVClub looks like a completely different site, and I can't stand that they split the interviews/features up across fifty billion pages (though they do have a print link, so, you know, guess what I'll be clicking every week...). And the front page is so _busy_ now. Blegh. My reaction to it was "Oh, so they're trying to get people to subscribe to the paper version!" Yeah, I know it's free, and yeah, I'll keep reading it every week, but still. The Onion/AVClub redesigns just keep getting worse and worse, IMHO. (What was wrong with the black-and-white AVClub site? I liked that. And the Onion used to be simple and easy to read. Gimcracks and geegaws don't automatically equal good web design.)

By: afu

afu — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 21:05:34 -0800

Long-Lost Georgia O'Keeffe Watercolor Found (NSFW) I remeber when I first read that article I was in a pizza place and two cops were sitting across from me reading the onion. They were like, "they can't put that in a free newspaper!"

By: sunexplodes

sunexplodes — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 21:16:10 -0800

"Sorry! It appears as if you’re using an unsupported Web browser. For best results, please try one of the following alternatives..." Hmmmm... Can't use Opera (Mac). Now *that* is funny.

By: Robot Johnny

Robot Johnny — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 21:29:32 -0800

My favourite Onion headline, you ask? This one.

By: i_am_joe's_spleen

i_am_joe's_spleen — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 21:54:36 -0800

My favourite, and apposite for the times: Why Do All These Homosexuals Keep Sucking My Cock?

By: hackly_fracture

hackly_fracture — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 22:49:10 -0800

can't find the point/counter-point "no all these horrible things will go wrong in Iraq if we invade/no they won't" one. I'm a bad archive searcher. But all the ones y'all have pointed out have been hilarious.

By: kyrademon

kyrademon — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 23:00:39 -0800

It makes it harder to read. I hate it.

By: Vidiot

Vidiot — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 00:36:19 -0800

Why Can't I Sell Any Of These Fucking Bibles?

By: wsg

wsg — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 00:37:28 -0800

The August 30, message from the publisher had me laughing out loud. I can't find my favorite story "Area bassist fellated." I searched "area," bassist" and "fellated" to no avail. As a bassist, I am offended. The search function does indeed appear to be weak, but I will reserve my final judgement, as the redesigners may still be working on it.

By: bouncebounce

bouncebounce — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 01:08:52 -0800

My favourite headline was along the lines of "Deteriorating Pope Blessing Everything in Sight". Unfortunately the archive search doesn't seem to be everything it could be. I loved the idea of the Vatican having to build massive underground storage areas for all the 747s JP2 had inadvertently beatified. Google helped me find a repost of it on another forum. The link from there to the original article doesn't work, however

By: mosk

mosk — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 01:56:11 -0800

Two of my favorites: Super Monkey Collider Loses Funding" and I Can't Stand My Filthy Hippie Owner

By: flippant

flippant — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 02:38:10 -0800

I quite like the site. Clean and newspaper-like. *reads the archives*

By: Meatbomb

Meatbomb — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 03:24:01 -0800

As a long time reader of The Economist, I was always got a chuckle out of the point-counterpoint one about the guy who had read something in The Economist, but I can't find that article right now and am too busy reading The Economist.

By: quarsan

quarsan — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 03:39:00 -0800

I really don't see the point of the flash stuff. It's just a complicated way of doing something very simple in html and css. Could someone enlighten me as to why exactly this site needs the sIFR? the design doesn't really do anything for me, it seems too busy and cluttered. On the plus side, I just love the Onion. I first came accross it in rural Tanzania where a Wisconsin Peace Corps Volunteer had it posted out to him. Lovely evenings over a hurricane lamp and a mosquito coil, reading bits out to each other.

By: Citizen Premier

Citizen Premier — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 04:10:25 -0800

Excellent. Now I can go back to analyzing the collected works of T. Herman Zweibel.

By: funambulist

funambulist — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 05:01:10 -0800

What fonts is sIFR used for on the Onion site? They seem to be using common ones. I disabled flash and javascript and the fonts looked exactly the same.

By: Termite

Termite — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 05:23:05 -0800

”Google Announces Plan To Destroy All Information It Can't Index. A year ago, Google offered to scan every book on the planet for its Google Print project. Now, they are promising to burn the rest.” Ha!

By: gnomeloaf

gnomeloaf — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 06:04:08 -0800

I'm trying to find my favorite article, "Babies are Stupid", and failing miserably. I'm also tried to find more of Amber Richardson's articles by looking up the name of her daughter, Rywanda, and it didn't find anything (even articles where I know it was mentioned). Sigh.

By: Robot Johnny

Robot Johnny — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 06:13:21 -0800

Yeah, the search function seems to be severely crappy.

By: gimonca

gimonca — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 06:20:22 -0800

My Computer Totally Hates Me

By: clgregor

clgregor — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 09:24:35 -0800

I'm happy to see they added their own RSS feeds. I was getting sick of the News is Free feed which was incomplete and filled with ads.

By: Meatbomb

Meatbomb — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 10:34:04 -0800

Aha! Found it, yay! Now back to reading all the fascinating articles in The Economist.

By: Radio7

Radio7 — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 15:34:15 -0800

I really dislike the new design. It's way too pale, and bland. They should have left well-enough alone. AVclub has always been my favorite part. I was surprised to read in the 'subtraction' article that it is often overlooked.

By: ghastlyfop

ghastlyfop — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 21:49:37 -0800

Yeah? I think the new design is great. So fuck you all.