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The bigger issue is that the barrier to entry is so low publishing online now that theonion.com doesn't hold much value.
The pay for writers isn't that great either afaik.
So a talented funny person is better off doing their own thing. YouTube used to be easy to monetize. I think it's more streaming and podcasts now.
So why did the Babylon Bee manage to overtake them in terms of relevancy?
They are still funny. The Onion will never have the balls to publish
https://babylonbee.com/news/to-protest-coronation-of-aragorn-orcs-announce-sex-strike
What about that do you find funny? (I'm not even certain that I get it.)
Some ultra liberal women decided to make the korean 4B movement happen after Trump won. A substantial part of them are not lookers and probably not women that the majority of men would put on the top of the fuckability pyramid anyway - hence the orks, also one of the safest assumptions you can make about the people that do this type of grand gesturing is that they are complete narcissists - so refusing to take them seriously is going to drive them nuts.
Here is a compilation video of them:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=A45XMOC7aPE
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The Babylon Bee was serving an underserved market. The Babylon Bee might individually be more relevant than the Onion but not so relevant when compared to all the Cathedral media. Of course that is an unfair comparison, but if you compare Cathedral vs anti-Cathedral media then Cathedral media in total is more relevant.
If we were talking about media broadly, I'd agree, but I think the broadest category that can be used fairly for the purposes of this conversation is "satirical publications". Is the any cathedral satire that matters at this point?
Private Eye still matters in the UK. It's relationship with the cathedral is somewhat ambiguous, but is more friendly than hostile.
My impression is that Last Week Tonight is relevant because it is the Schelling point for a certain type of pro-establishment left person to know what the current thing is.
I agree with that, I'm just not sure if I'd grant that it's satire or comedy.
Edit: Hold on, I'd like to amend that. I don't know if you can be "relevant" and "preaching to the choir". Sure, the choir in this case is pretty massive, but it's still people who have 100% bought into the narrative you're putting forward. To put it another way John Oliver, feels about as relevant as Matt Walsh.
Every once in a while the Cathedral still manages to concoct something that feels like everyone has to keep up with - "Don't Look Up", "Get Out"..., ok I'm already coming up short, and the latter is already quite dated, and indeed my point is that these instances seem to come up a lot less frequently. More like dying twitches of something, than a real cultural force.
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