You know that I've been drunk a thousand times

[venta]

Yesterday, ChrisC was reading a news story entitled something like "Iceland meat pies found to contain no meat at all". The story basically ran that the beef pies were being checked for horse meat content, and were discovered to be entirely free of meat from any kind of animal at all.

At this point, I can't see the URL the story is coming from, but I feel I know where I am. This is a satirical story about the frozen food emporium, Iceland, and their low-quality meat pies.

Except it's being touted as an actual, genuine news story about the large, bankrupt, volcanic island, Iceland, and their mysteriously vegetabley meat pies.

I'm pretty sure that not being able to distinguish between actual news and satire is a sign of the end times.

Comments

[beckyl.livejournal.com]

Y'know, that's a fairly big bovine...

And yes, end times all round.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Now I'm unsure whether to award you a kudo or look offended ;)

[beckyl.livejournal.com]

Both, clearly.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure that not being able to distinguish between actual news and satire is a sign of the end times.

If so, the end times started in the mid 90s. Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert) once wrote a blog post about this. He invited Dilbert readers to send him stories of real-life office comedy/stupidity/pointy-haired-ness. And to his horror he found that many of them were more stupid than the world of Dilbert. To the point where had he used some of them as the premise of Dilbert strips they wouldn't have been funny due to being far too implausible and/or surreal.

[exspelunca.livejournal.com]

Earlier than that - J B Morton (Beachcomber) gave up in, I think, 1975 because of the difficulty of separating satire from actual news and didn't Tom Lehrer give up earlier, too?

[venta.livejournal.com]

Interestingly, Wikipedia, he says:

"There is an urban legend that Lehrer gave up political satire when the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Henry Kissinger in 1973. He did comment that awarding the prize to Kissinger made political satire obsolete, but has denied that he stopped creating satire thereafter as a form of protest, asserting that he had stopped several years prior to the award."

[venta.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure telling me that the end-times have been going on for longer than I think is actually consoling, y'know ;)

[venta.livejournal.com]

In that case, have a slightly insulted kudo :)

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Sustainable end times! :-)

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Are you familiar with the excellent http://theon1on.com/ ? Motto: Sadly, this is not The Onion.

[dr-bob.livejournal.com]

This story sounds like someone didn't set their PCRs up properly. Proving things by absence of a positive test is a dangerous business.

[glamwhorebunni.livejournal.com]

There's a Buffy episode where this is the plot... She goes to work in a fast food restaurant, there are mysterious disappearances, she's convinced the bodies are being turned into burgers. She gets Willow to test them, and it turns out the burgers actually contain no meat at all.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublemeat_Palace

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

The Kissinger Peace Prize is the moment I'd point to as when the situation was irretrievable. Then inthe 80s we had postmodernism and the culture she went pop. Then the Internet came bearing emailed urban legends, the gift that will not stop giving. And then Sir Tim made the web and Wkipedia made everything Ok again. Didn't it?

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Ah, the song of the Thames. Every drop has indeed been drunk a thousand times.

[d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com]

[grin]

[killalla]

I was just going to comment along those lines - hang on, wasn't this an episode of Buffy?