The Onion defends right to parody in Supreme Court brief

Re:The Onion defends right to parody in Supreme Court brief by stuartjohnson12 on Tuesday October 04, 2022 @11:04AM (#33081398)

The joke is that corporations do performative political acts to appear socially conscious. They are using hyperbole based on this stereotype to joke that Applebee's (a relatable family diner) has done something incredibly minor (limiting the scope to "to-go orders" while still allowing her to sit down) as a political stunt. The joke arises from the contrast between the seriousness of the allegations and the minorness of the punishment.

It's not good comedy, but the basis of a joke is there.

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Re:The Onion defends right to parody in Supreme Court brief by bena on Tuesday October 04, 2022 @11:18AM (#33081598)

So, like in the realm of something that doesn't happen but we're going to say it totally happens because of... reasons.

It's not even in the realm of hyperbole, is it. It may want to be, but it's not. And unless this is something common to "relatable family diner(s)", singling out Applebees is also a head scratcher. The "joke" here is "fucking liberals". When the "fucking liberal" in this case is just a random ass pull.

It's a combination of odd reaches and odd selection of targets that makes one more say "what?" than anything else.

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Re:The Onion defends right to parody in Supreme Court brief by autoexec on Wednesday October 05, 2022 @03:16AM (#33092266)

> So, like in the realm of something that doesn't happen but we're going to say it totally happens because of... reasons.

Kind of like how schools don't actually give students detention for missing class during shootings, but the onion said it total happens because of...

It's the same thing. The Onion does it much better, but it's still satire.

I wouldn't fault someone for enjoying the Onion but not being a fan of the Babylon Bee though. In addition to having worse writers the Bee is also limited to pandering to the worldview of their target audience which doesn't always have a solid basis in reality. It's easy for their jokes to fall completely flat when they're a scathing critique of something imaginary, but if you were a believer in the fantasy you'd probably feel the Bee was much more entertaining.

That said, the Bee does manage to land some solid hits at times and I suspect the cognitive dissonance that can cause may make some people uncomfortable which could also sour their enjoyment a bit.

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Re:The Onion defends right to parody in Supreme Court brief by tanseydavid on Tuesday October 04, 2022 @04:04PM (#33085950)

Where I come from the name "Applebees" is mockingly used interchangably with TGIFridays, Chilis etc. because the menu and dining experience is mostly indistinguishable from brand to brand.

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Re:The Onion defends right to parody in Supreme Court brief by bena on Tuesday October 04, 2022 @04:27PM (#33086304)

Right, but none of them are doing anything like this. It would make sense if Applebees was doing something similar so you can do the comparison. Or if these chain Americano restaurants had a history of these types of actions so you can do that comparison. But neither of those things are true.

It's why I contrasted it with the Onion's headline about students fleeing school shootings getting detention. All the links to events are there to be made. The Applebees thing lacks those links. In this case Applebees is standing in for Twitter. Which is just a weird stand in. It would be funny if the headline was that MySpace was proactively banning Greene for blah blah blah. Because MySpace is also a social media company, but completely irrelevant, so it's funny because it's essentially "you can't fire me, I quit".

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