Wednesday, June 20, 2018

"The Onion is on a crusade against Mark Zuckerberg because it says Facebook is choking its traffic" (FB)

From Business Insider, June 15:
The Onion is in the business of making jokes about pretty much anything in the news. But this week, the satirical news site appears to have trained its fire on one particular target: Facebook and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Over the last two days, The Onion has published around a dozen articles ridiculing the social network and its founder, and it says there's more on the way.

Why? The Onion's editor-in-chief Chad Nackers told Business Insider that the comedy onslaught is because Zuckerberg has "repeatedly betrayed the trust of billions of people," and because Facebook is choking off traffic to The Onion's website.

"We have 6,572,949 followers on Facebook who receive an ever-decreasing amount of the content we publish on the network," Nackers said in a statement, calling Facebook an "unwanted interloper" between the publisher and its audience.

In other words, The Onion is on a mission. 

A multi-day lampooning

One of the first in the barrage on Thursday poked fun of the 34-year-old CEO: Mark Zuckerberg Insists Anyone With Same Skewed Values And Unrelenting Thirst For Power Could Have Made Same Mistakes.

The Onion's parody news article quoted a would-be Zuckergerg:
"'I know I screwed up, and I understand why you're all upset, but if you were a morally corrupt megalomaniac hell-bent on manipulating society to your twisted whims, you would have done the exact same thing,' said Zuckerberg, suggesting that people should put themselves in the shoes of a self-absorbed asshole with a warped perception of humanity who justified the exploitation of personal connections as a means of amassing unfettered influence and profits to truly comprehend why he made every completely fucked-up decision."
Another Onion article skewered Facebook's arguably cringey "Here Together" campaign: Facebook Users Ashamed Of Criticizing Company After Seeing Heartwarming 'Here Together' Ad Campaign.

After that came a flurry of more jabs at the Facebook CEO....MUCH MORE