The Onion To Debut New Website Parodying Buzzfeed and Upworthy
I can't make a sub-header joke when I'm writing about The Onion. That's flying a little too close to the sun.
America’s Finest News Source has a new platform for satirizing uniquely 20th century media–on Tuesday The Onion announced Clickhole.com, a site dedicated to parodying Upworthy, Buzzfeed, and endless over-sharing.
Clickhole is set to launch this June. “Jim Haggerty”, an Onion News Network host portrayed by Brad Holbrook, described what the site will offer and how it will differ from typical Onion fare. Clickhole will feature:
[C]ontent and sponsored posts side by side, with barely any distinction between them […] People will climb into this click hole and find content so interesting they won’t be able to keep it to themselves […]Every post is engineered to be as shareable as possible, so it spreads like a deadly wildfire on social media.
New York Business Journal lists some sample Clickhole content presented on Tuesday at The Onion’s NewFronts presentation in New York:
- Quizzes like “Which pizza should I have for dinner tonight? (presented by Pizza Hut)”
- Uplifting personal tales in list forms: “Seven pricks that defied the odds and didn’t go into finance.”
- The aww factor: A video titled “What this adorable little girl says will melt your heart.” (It’s actually a cogent explanation of how brands monetize adorable little kids, as spoken by an adorable little kid.)
- And finally, photo slide shows with no words: “Six kinds of hay.”
Posts on real-life Buzzfeed right now include “16 Happy Animals You Didn’t Know Could Smile,” presented by Smile Train, “13 Reasons Why Pasta Is The Most Magical Thing on Earth” from Kraft, and “Which Female Celebrity Should You Have Sex With?”, so it’s pretty clear that the whole “what is this, The Onion?” trend is about to intensify.
I can’t wait. Only one more month until I find out what kind of hay I am.
(New York Business Journal via Jezebel, images via hildgrim)
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