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Real Reactions to Fake News

The Onion refers to itself as "America's Finest News Source," and I completely agree. The satire paper, which now lives completely online, has been a favorite of mine since I was in high school. One of the best decisions I've made in the last few years was to add The Onion on Facebook, because while I know The Onion is satire, a lot of people don't.

Generally the people who comment on the actual posts know that headlines like, "Area Grandmother Comes Forward as Banksy," are completely made up. But, if you look at the shares, oh boy. You get comments like, "Damn... i thought that u r guy.. but now.. thst gonna change our view on ur art... [sic]" and "Wow! Who'd Thunk? In that case?Well Done, Rose!"

I know it's probably not healthy to delight in the mis-information of others, but I really, really, really, take delight in this. There's even a whole website devoted to the joy of people not knowing The Onion is fake. Literally Unbelievable's subtitle is "Stories from The Onion as interpreted by Facebook" and it puts together some of the best, "how did you not know this was fake?!" responses to some of the craziest headlines.

In 2014, Facebook adding a satire label to The Onion and other satire site's posts to help its users from getting duped. In response to the label, The Onion published, "Area Facebook User Incredibly Stupid." But people are still gullible, so sites like Literally Unbelievable live on and Flo & Frank can curate this video of our favorite "."

Bonus info: On the other side of the coin, check out the Reddit board r/nottheonion. Not The Onion's contributors submit, "true stories that are so mind-blowingly ridiculous, that you could have sworn it was an Onion story." Headlines like, "We don’t need to drink less soda, according to research funded by Coca-Cola." Oof.