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Facebook is Trying Out a Satire Tag Because Crazy Aunt Gertie and Uncle Harold Don’t Get It

Oh, Internet. For all your brilliance and nuanced intelligence, there’s a veritable army of confused aunts and angry uncles parading around Facebook thinking stuff that is completely — and obviously — fake may in fact just be real. I mean there are blogs dedicated to the stuff. So we suppose, for as unnecessary as it seems to us, that Facebook rolling out a ‘Satire’ tag so favorites like The Onion and ClickHole makes sense for those out there that just don’t get it.

According to Mashable, who spoke to a Facebook representative to confirm the matter, it’s only in test mode, but it’s happening. “We are running a small test which shows the text ‘[Satire]’ in front of links to satirical articles in the related articles unit in News Feed.”

Apparently the social networking behemoth/eventual overlord of the world was getting complaints. Explained the same representative: “This is because we received feedback that people wanted a clearer way to distinguish satirical articles from others in these units.”

For all you Aunt Gerties and Uncle Harolds out there, satire is when someone utilizes humor, irony, or exaggeration to ridicule and highlight the absurd nature of people’s beliefs, vices, or general and/or topical behavior. It should come as a surprise to pretty much no one that, say, the folks that partake in the actions being satirically skewered, may not necessarily understand it as such. After all, some days it feels as though The Onion is writing our real world headlines, not the fake ones, eh?

If you click on over to Ars Technica, you can see a screengrab of the brackets in action.

What do you think of the roll-out? Is it necessary or just silly? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

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Comments

  1. Granny Sharptongue says:

    I am tired of you young snots making fun of older people’s computer skills. I would like to see you load a typewriter with mimeograph paper, then type 60 words per minute with no errors, because correcting errors on mimeograph paper is nearly impossible. Then load the whole damn thing on a mimeograph machine and make copies, not shredding! Pikers. You’re a damn bunch of arrogant snot-nosed pikers. Humbug.

  2. Apparently there are some really young aunt Gerties on Facebook because friends of my daughter are mistaking this stuff for real news. 

  3. KVC says:

    I’m all for it.  Then I won’t have to keep trying to find polite ways to tell people the crazy story they’re sharing is not true.  People should be more skeptical, but some of these sites are going out of there way to try to fool people.

  4. Justin says:

    Wait… Is this satire?

  5. sayhello says:

    Well, maybe it will keep me from seeing the same posts shared over and over again with the same “OMG” and “the sky is falling” commentary.

  6. Henry Hui Hui says:

    Does this mean all Fox News post will automatically come with. [SATIRE] prefix?