God bless the goddamn Onion

I think it's verisimilitude doing the work more than anything else, the article seemed very mid-period Onion in that they've never actually dropped off from having A+ funny ideas but they don't always have more in the article than "The Headline, Expanded". It seemed like they were acknowledging this when they brought in the front page stuff that was just headlines.

Trayce have you considered being Amanda Palmer, I am genuinely surprised at how many people don't consider this as a career option.

I think if I spent significantly longer on my creative endeavour, I'd want some sort of progress to happen to them...

i don't think the bigger issue is whether you should be able to make a living from your personal creative interests, what the piece nails is the relative time and energy people feel they're able to allot to what they have to do and what they want to do. for some people that's not problematic, it's LYFE, and for others it's terrible but you can disagree with where the fault lies, yrself or the society you belong to or some combo of both

i just think its good to remember that no side has a monopoly on truth there as to what's effed up with the world and if your world doesn't seem too effed up then good for you, carry on

Trayce have you considered being Amanda Palmer

Haha. I'd rather die.

i liked and vibed w/ that article but lets b/h its a slightly more subtle/less earnest version of the stuff we make fun of on the facebook artist thread

that tends to be laughed at for the manner in which it's said more than what it's saying though I think?

ie obvious truisms presented as 'insight'

yeah there's nothing deep in that Onion bit but it's delivery twists the knife in just right, plenty of wisdom is just reminding you of shit you already know

it's not even a particularly well written one imo, by their own v high standards of rhythm, but it is a good topic.

the fb thread is 'follow yr dreams' (rainbow font, misspellings, improper period usage, other goodies aside). this is more 'lool this is is what happens when you follow yr dreams, sucker.'

it's more "your dreams mean nothing, stop dreaming" imo

i wonder if this thing "connecting on facebook" has anything to do with the whole tail-end-of-gen-x-thru-gen-y helicopter parenting developing into entitlement issues for a bunch of kids who were told they were gonna live their dreams but instead now we have a fiscal crisis and an engineer shortage and a bunch of 20/30-somethings who didn't live their dreams but ultimately live cushy enough lives inherited from their middle-to upper-middle-to-upper-class upbringings to be on the internet all day and dominate the discourse with things like forwarding onion articles and upvoting "harlem shake" videos.

in short, this was a funny onion piece and i enjoyed it.

in its entire history there are like 7 onion articles total that are strong reads from headline to byline... i really liked it when they switched to the headline/one paragraph format, less chance to fuck it up

man that is some harsh judgement...

Bylines are traditionally placed between the headline and the text of the article

Find The Thing You're Most Passionate About, Then Do It On Nights And Weekends For The Rest Of Your Life

hahaha!

COMMENTARY • Opinion • ISSUE 49•12 • Mar 20, 2013
By David Ferguson

ok you lost me at ISSUE 49•12

haha you know what i meant, and irealizd that the onion places its authors right below the headline as i wrote that but i didnt give a fuccccckkkk

the 20/30-somethings experience

i wonder if this thing "connecting on facebook" has anything to do with the whole tail-end-of-gen-x-thru-gen-y helicopter parenting developing into entitlement issues for a bunch of kids who were told they were gonna live their dreams but instead now we have a fiscal crisis and an engineer shortage and a bunch of 20/30-somethings who didn't live their dreams but ultimately live cushy enough lives inherited from their middle-to upper-middle-to-upper-class upbringings to be on the internet all day and dominate the discourse with things like forwarding onion articles and upvoting "harlem shake" videos.

― îron swanson (Whiney G. Weingarten), Thursday, March 21, 2013 8:55 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah I think this is very much about being a generation raised by dreamy boomers but without the boomer economy/job market to back up those dreams. I just heard some reasonably established middle-aged journalist on NPR saying "When I started my career, all the papers had some kind of paid entry level position that you could get with no experience and it paid the bills and you could feed yourself and build a portfolio" and I was like YEAH RIGHT BULLSHIT THAT NEVER HAPPENED...really?

They would have 'one' position like that.

(I remember C-Man ranting on about being turned down as a school leaver for such a placing, in favour of some 'pretty girl' apparently, and the daft thing was, I'd applied for one as well and also got turned down and had completely forgotten about..)

IDK though, I feel like you hear a lot more older journalists talk about working their way up through a single paper, and starting in a paid job (if not a paid writing job, maybe copy editing). This "internship" concept didn't exist, let alone doing a series of four or five unpaid internships. And there were more papers, with more money, and probably less competition too because fewer people graduated college. Of course you're still getting the selection bias of people who made it when you listen to those interviews, but I definitely think we face a combination of a larger generation of people who feel that they should have "interesting" work combined with a lower availability of that kind of work (unless you're in computers).

Well, I hope those paths still exist, as Amber is keen on doing Jnlsm...

Oh man. Tell her to go into Telemarketing or some other more lucrative career.

well no, the decidedly do not still exist. that's my whole point.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/obama-rachel-goldstein-really-hitting-it-off-on-gr,31753

This may be obvious, but surely part of the appeal of the ''do what you love'' bit is that it's expressly sending up a popular theme OF the facebook macro industry, and the specific uncritical glibness that imagines that anybody doing something they don't love must just not be trying hard enough or loving life enough, or whatever?

yesss

http://www.theonion.com/articles/youtube-reaches-1-trillion-racist-comments,31766/

^ does kinda make me wonder how many terabytes of server space are occupied by the word "faggot"

http://i.imgur.com/tr5Zdu2.png

hah

http://www.theonion.com/articles/the-time-for-watereddown-and-effectively-meaningle,31751/

http://o.onionstatic.com/images/21/21461/original/700.hq.jpg?8475

aww the birthright article is beautiful

On the old school paid journalism note, Bryson does a nice turn in his UK travels book about his time at one of the London papers just before Murdoch came in and tipped it all upside down and he speaks of 3 hour lunches and people starting at 11 and bailing at 5, and it sounded like a magical unionised fairyland to me.

I worked in Fleet Street on 'location' (not in the journo industry, t'was insurance), and yes I 'vaguely' remember the Friday afternoons...

http://www.theonion.com/articles/ad-for-drummer-personally-attacks-old-drummer,31911/

hahah, was just about to post that

Ned, is it me or do you seem to find a way to make references to Peruvian things some how? Have you ever been?

It's usually jaymc who does the perusing.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/obama-rachel-goldstein-really-hitting-it-off-on-gr,31753

― Mordy, Thursday, March 21, 2013 2:10 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i don't think i get this one

The choice of bandname is amusing coincidence. I have not been, but I have reasons to appreciate the country.

sd: it's a birthright trip thang

Ned, so do I.

Lima itself has turned into a nice city, but the real treat is traveling through the provinces, depending on what you enjoy.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/obama-rachel-goldstein-really-hitting-it-off-on-gr,31753

― Mordy, Thursday, March 21, 2013 2:10 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i don't think i get this one

― some dude, Wednesday, April 3, 2013 7:43 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

iirc its common for jewish american youth to take an extended trip to israel at some point, usually with a group of other youth, which can result in a summer-camp-like environment, occasionally yielding romance/crushes

obama's first trip to israel, etc

http://www.theonion.com/articles/syrians-lives-are-worthless-obama-tells-daughters,31934

http://www.theonion.com/articles/south-carolina-defends-right-to-fly-hardees-flag-f,31881/

http://www.theonion.com/articles/roger-ebert-hails-human-existence-as-a-triumph,31945/

much nicer than their response to siskel's passing

ah ok thnks for explaining the israel thing -- i mean i was aware of that aspect but didn't realize it was the crux of the comedy, was like is this just a lol what if obama was a pedo thing?

huh, your post was how i heard ebert died.