No, It's All Too Believable

Previously I mentioned Literally Unbelievable, the web site that shows articles from The Onion that have been shared on Facebook, along with the reactions of Facebook users oblivious to the satirical nature of the articles.

With the American election campaign on the go, The Onion has been doing more political articles, and that's shown up in the articles featured in Literally Unbelievable.  Recent articles getting attention include:

• Obama to appeal to younger voters by appearing in a stoner comedy with Seth Rogen and James Franco
• Paul Ryan thinks he should have told Romney about guy he's dating
• Obama ad accuses Romney of murdering JonBenet Ramsey
• Romney admits he made $32 trillion in 2006
• Obama pledges to repeal health care if re-elected

What's funny/depressing about all this is that the way people talk about these fake and ridiculous articles is pretty much the same way people talk about real issues.  In response to the piece about Romney and his huge earnings, the liberals point to it as evidence of our system corrupted by a manipulative oligarchy for its own ends, while the conservatives jump to his defence saying he deserves it and we should stop demonizing success.  The fact that they're talking about a fictitious story doesn't seem to matter. 

Also, people seem willing to believe so much about the other side.  When the Romney story mentions that he's on the board of 486 Fortune 500 companies, it fits right into the world-view of cynical liberals.  And angry conservatives have such a strong view of Obama as lazy, incompetent and without morals, that they'll go for any story about desperate campaign manoeuvres.

So the moral of this story is that if you've ever suspected that modern politics is just a kind of theatre of confrontation where the substance itself is near irrelevant, well, um, yep.