The Onion Parodies PS3 Bug

[Greg Tito]

The Onion Parodies PS3 Bug

America's Finest News Source, The Onion, lampooned this week's PS3 bug with their regular feature America Voices.

The Onion has been one of my favorite things ever since I heard about it back in the 90s. I used to get the print version delivered to my house in college and my mates would often read headlines out loud to the general glee of everyone within earshot. When I moved to New York City, I was surprised and delighted that The Onion had expanded there and installed dispensers on nearly every corner which gave away whole issues, for free! While The Onion has expanded into video and audio offerings on the web, it has stayed true to its roots as a perfect parody of our news culture. Geeks and gaming are typical topics at the fake paper, (such as this oddly prescient Warcraft player Larry Grosnic [http://www.theonion.com/content/node/27397]) but I was psyched to see them moving on a story so quickly when its American Voices feature asked what people thought of the PlayStation 3 bug on Monday.

The Onion asked three people on the street the following question [http://www.theonion.com/content/amvo/playstation_3_outage_angers]: "A programming bug in Sony's PlayStation 3 caused error messages to crop up this week, and the manufacturer urged owners not to use the gaming console for 24 hours. What do you think?"

Says Larry Chilton, systems analyst, "I couldn't drive my Toyota or use my PlayStation, so I just called up my Grandpa and complained about the Japanese with him."

Source: The Onion [http://www.theonion.com/content/amvo/playstation_3_outage_angers]




Permalink

 

[Deofuta]

Haha! There is always something funny and enjoyable in The Onion. Certainly the greatest source of news in America these days.

 

[DarkSaber]

I always find The Onion to be hit and miss myself. Mostly miss, but the funny ones are really good.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

I sort of prefer this one about Sony

Spoiler: Very NSFW. Naughty language, but no nudity

 

[JEBWrench]

Mr. Chilton said it best:

"I couldn't drive my Toyota or use my PlayStation, so I just called up my Grandpa and complained about the Japanese with him."

 

[Generic_Dave]

I love the Onion, they did a great one about Google apologising for not respecting privacy enough that left me guffawing.

The vids can a bit trite, but I swing by at least once a week to have a laugh. It was the only thing I like about New York when I was working on building site one summer in my mis-spent youth...that and an Irish bar on Queens Boulvard who's name I can't recall...

 

[Souplex]

Why did you leave New York in the first place? And don't say for the Escapist, because it would be much more logical for the Escapist to come to New York.

 

[randommaster]

The Onion is awesome, but my favorite piece is actually from the AVClub that gets printed alongside (within?) it. It was an article of a sampling of the KFC Famous Bowl, and one of the funniest pieces of criticisms I have ever read.

 

[chris11246]

I sort of prefer this one about Sony

Spoiler: Very NSFW. Naughty language, but no nudity

I loved that one

Spoiler: and this one

 

[reg42]

The Onion is pretty funny sometimes, though they can be pretty hit or miss. The Onion Movie was really funny though.

 

[blalien]

This article about the article is longer than the article itself. I'm tempting to write an article about this article that's even longer, but I'm too lazy to work that hard for a cheap laugh.

 

[DarkSaber]

I sort of prefer this one about Sony

Spoiler: Very NSFW. Naughty language, but no nudity

This, for example, WAS one of the ones I found really funny when I saw it.

 

[Jared]

I always find The Onion to be hit and miss myself. Mostly miss, but the funny ones are really good.

Same here.

That did make me giggle though, the last statement

 

[CyberKnight]

You mention the Warcraft editorial but not the feature on World of World of Warcraft?

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/warcraft_sequel_lets_gamers_play

The ultra-realistic Modern Warfare 3 video was pretty good, too:

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/ultra_realistic_modern_warfare

 

[CUnk]

I like how people always have to make sure everyone knows that they only find a few things funny at the Onion. It's OK. No one is going to think you're out of touch because you happen to find something humorous on a venerable web site that everyone in the world knows about.

Same goes for College Humor. I see a lot of people apologize for linking videos from them even though they have a lot of really funny videos.

 

[hansari]

I like how people always have to make sure everyone knows that they only find a few things funny at the Onion. It's OK. No one is going to think you're out of touch because you happen to find something humorous on a venerable web site that everyone in the world knows about.

Agreed...but not on that last part.



~

Beijing's most popular newspaper has unwittingly republished a bogus story about U.S. Congress threats to skip town for Memphis or Charlotte unless Washington builds them a new Capitol building with a retractable dome.

The source? America's celebrated spoof tabloid, the Onion.

 

[The Random One]

My favourite gamer thing on the onion was that, back in the early days of the console war, on the news ticker at the bottom of one of their video, one of the news was "Sony to attempt to increase PS3 sales by giving away a free Wii with every purchase".

I actually had to stop and laugh out loud at that one.