So, you’d like to sell your print issues of The Onion?
theonion.com
theonion.com
I'd be surprised if the anti-clickbait title filtering is a net positive.
> Rising from its humble beginnings as a print newspaper in 1756, The Onion now enjoys a daily readership of 4.3 trillion and has grown into the single most powerful and influential organization in human history.
so I'm pretty sure it's just a joke.
I was surprised that they didn't contribute to the jokes, it really does read like it was written by a particularly funny lawyer.
Who knows, if they've been around for 270 years, they might use troff like research papers.
Later on in the brief they get all self-referential and point out how this brief itself exemplifies parody. But this isn't a parody of a legal brief. It's a real legal brief with arguments and citations that might really sway the court, with some parodic elements.
I'm not. Even if one is entirely unfamiliar with The Onion, the final paragraph of the first section makes it pretty clear what they're about and why the document they're submitting is written the way that it is:
> The Onion files this brief to protect its continued ability to create fiction that may ultimately merge into reality. As the globe’s premier parodists, The Onion’s writers also have a self-serving interest in preventing political authorities from imprisoning humorists. This brief is submitted in the interest of at least mitigating their future punishment.
And, as the titles(?) of Arguments I and III note
> Parody Functions By Tricking People Into Thinking That It Is Real.
> A Reasonable Reader Does Not Need A Disclaimer To Know That Parody Is Parody.
You're correct, yes.
> Unless I'm the gullible, unreasonable person who was tricked and still doesn't fully get it.
You're -I presume- neither more gullible nor more unreasonable than typical for humans, but no, you still don't get it.
A huge part of the practice of law is persuasion. What better way to persuade someone that the laws and regulations that have protected parody for ages are good, prosocial, and should remain intact than to gently use parody as part of one's document of persuasion?
If your position is that parody is strictly prohibited in a legal document, then what's next on the chopping block? Metaphor? Simile? Colloquialisms?
Quoting its Wikipedia page: "The book, spun off from The Onion weekly-newspaper format of dryly satirizing current events, features mocked-up newspaper front pages from the entire 20th century, presented as though The Onion had been continuously in print since before 1900." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Dumb_Century
Unfortunately they were removed and I don't believe they were archived anywhere :(
More kvetching: https://www.reddit.com/r/madmen/comments/1q6rn6j/avclub_epis...
but it's not like a lost Doctor Who episode, it will show up eventually
meanwhile they can keep eerily predicting dystopia like the government televising executions for entertainment a year before it happens
Even mags where there were hundreds of thousands or millions of copies printed there are issues getting scarce. Trying to find a June 2002 issue of Maximum PC to scan was troublesome. I have one now in the scan queue, but even the cover was a mystery:
https://theonion.com/cash-room-bitch-be-havin-my-shortie-181...
Sleepless hours and dreamless nights and far aways / Ooo ooo ooo, wishing you were here…
https://theonion.com/it-wuz-always-bout-tha-numbahs-18195843...
I believe The Onion moved (back) to Chicago from NYC in 2012 around the time that print editions were also discontinued.
Anyway, I'm a big fan of what their new(ish) management has been doing, especially with infowars. I hope they can get the issues they're looking for.
* It was a huge hit on campus almost right away, or at least once it found its footing and sensibility - the dry conventions of journalism applied to mundane events.
* The sensibility of The Onion was very midwestern, and specifically "college-town Midwestern slacker". I knew exactly the type of people they had in mind when writing about "Area Man". This article captures that well: https://www.midstory.org/the-onions-midwestern-homecoming/
* I remember thinking that lots of college towns must have a satirical newspaper as good as this. Then when it went national, realizing that it was really something special.
I wonder what freshmen who didn't know about it thought about that issue in August of '91 when going to their first lecture "University digs mass grave for incoming freshmen." (The foundations of Grainger Hall were being excavated)
No better example than Jim Anchower, who was hysterical to Wisconsin locals specifically.
That's here: https://theonion.com/archivehunt/
Because they are looking for issues in 2012 and 2013 as well.