The Onion Launches Clickhole, a New Site Skewering BuzzFeed

Once any institution sufficiently debases itself enough, it reaches a point where it becomes increasingly impossible to satirize. Consider the right wing of American politics, for one example. Or, as we’ve seen in the viral content era we’re living through now, the state of internet media. The past few years have seen countless attempts to poke some of the steaming, foul air out of the gaseous, fetid corpse of online discourse, most regularly in mocking japes aimed at the likes of BuzzFeed, and yet the thousand-beaked leviathan remains impervious to any attack.

If anyone can put a dent in the viral media model, however, it’s the people behind The Onion, who’ve launched their latest venture today Clickhole.

“Let’s be honest: Today, the average website carelessly churns out hundreds of pieces of pandering, misleading content, most of which tragically fall short of going viral,” the site explains of its mission. “At ClickHole, we refuse to stand for this. We strive to make sure that all of our content panders to and misleads our readers just enough to make it go viral.”

The site aims to do for viral online media what The Onion has done previously for old model newspapers and TV news.

“For us, ClickHole is just another mirror we can hold up to society,” The Onion managing editor Ben Berkley told Fast Company. “There’s a lot of this ‘Internet content’ that’s just so vapid and reductive–that’s counter-productive to the greater good … ClickHole is just a cool new medium for us to tell jokes through.”

So far the results have been predictably amusing. “If I Ordered Fries, Would You Have Any?” one parody of the relentless stream of quizzes you’ve likely seen crowding your social media feed asks. How Many Of These ‘Friends’ Episodes Have You Seen? asks another.

Interestingly enough, however, The Huffington Post overtook BuzzFeed in terms of Facebook shares in the month of May, and traffic on their quizzes seems to have declined.

Other Clickhole bits poke at the persistent inanity of pop-culture obsessed solipsism that so many of us use as a crutch for actual personalities now, like this one: “Want To Feel Old? The Movie ‘High Fidelity’ Would Be A Sexy 14-Year-Old By Now.”

Relatedly, I contributed to a site with a similar concept called Feedbuzz for a while last year, with such gems as “The Egyptian Coup Explained by YouPorn Comments.”

While it will be fun to see what they come up with at Clickhole as it develops, it’s hard to think that it will have any actual effect on the internet landscape. Whether or not it ends up being a viral hit, we can take solace in the fact that there’s still no better hilarious internet parody site out there than regular old Buzzfeed itself.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.