Back in college, I discovered The Onion,
a parody newspaper that most Web users are quite familiar with, even
though the majority are unaware that actual print versions of The Onion have existed for quite some time. It was irreverent, funny, very smart, and tapped into the same zeitgeist that has made The Daily Show so successful, only The Onion did it first. At least it used to.
Originally, The Onion was based out of Wisconsin, and was run
by a ragtag band of cheeky Midwestern quasi-college geeks. Then, they
got really famous, some investors showed up and the whole production
got moved to New York, which is when The Onion stopped being quite so funny. Sure, the retro collection Our Dumb Century,
which made up fake back issues covering 1900 to 1999, was
laugh-out-loud genius, but I haven’t seen a “Microsoft patents ones and
zeroes”-level headline in quite a while.
Until today. This week’s issue of The Onion is from the year 2056, and holy crap is it funny. Old-school funny. Glad to have it back.