The Backstreet Boys Or 'N Sync Release New Album

"Those boy bands are all alike!" is the refrain we've all heard ad infinitum in the media for years and years now, so what's the point? The Onion is no fun at all when its satire is so toothless and lazy.

IMHO the Onion's at its very best when attacking twentysomething hipster culture -- wonderfully misanthropic streaks of self-loathing buried in the painfully-accurate little details.

Yeah, it was old news, I just like their turns of phrase.

More and more the Onion does seem to reflect its writers more than any 'whole America'; maybe I've just got too used to the style. I often wonder if their pictures are just of people who work there, esp that guy this week who always knows what not to do on dates.

the article about the aging gen-xer who didn't enjoy things that were hilariously bad anymore, that one really hurt. go read it, it's sad.

I felt that article's pain...considering I too have Xanadu on videotape.

I like the Anne Geddes losing it part

of course for that to be funny anne geddes would have to be not insane in the first place.

I agree with ethan, I think Ann Geddes is completely luny to begin with. Just look at the pictures, gah.

Gedes is truly avant garde - the creepiness of infants crawling like insects was enough to alarm anyone... Momus, perhaps this is what you mean by 'Cute Formalism'?

God, I hope not. If so I may have to avoid Momus. Those pictures are painfully repulsive.

side question: what are your favorite onion music-related articles? the clinton-zz top one was hilarious at the time, but i have a soft spot for the recent 'nation has crush on girl from record store' for being set in my hometown.

I liked the one about "corporations using songs about heroin addiction in advertising." the justification: "we believe the hopelessness and cynicism resonate with the american people right now in this time of incredible prosperity."

It's got to be 'Mothership lands at Hootie and the Blowfish concert', although that girl at the record store one was great, too.

"Blues Musician to UN - 'Yemen Done Me Wrong'"

Wait wait wait: there's nothing in that piece that makes any claims whatsoever about the two groups sounding the same. The humor, so far as I'm concerned, lies in the fact that the majority of the public is utterly indifferent to which of them does what. Asking most people to differentiate between the two would be like asking a 90 year old Somali woman to differentiate between Travis and Coldplay.

It's a marketing function, I think: whenever something is popular with teens in that age group where their devotion knows no bounds, the amount of attention it gets is entirely out of proportion to the actual number of people who care. So if you're like me, you feel like you're being told these things are important, despite the fact that you really don't care at all. E.g., which Backstreet Boy is in rehab? My own lack of interest in this question astounds me.

On the topic of monumental indifference, the funniest thing I've seen in years was an old Chris Rock show where he went to Harlem to get people's reactions to Barbara Streisand's "final performance." "Are you sad about it?" "Umm . . . No, not really."

Nitsuh, as is the case disturbingly often, speaks the complete truth. In the same way that the Onion story about Starbucks moving into phase II of their global domination masterplan wasn't funny because it was taking a pop at Starbucks's overbearing business practices (too easy a target) but because it was playing with the whole idea of the 'ooh - Starbucks are evil' meme.

Sorry, I said meme.

the fatal error in that last post being that the onion story, or rather ANY humor piece about starbucks, is simply not funny.

Nitsuh: So? Even if "most people don't care about teenpop" is the thrust, rather than "all the boybands are the same" (and I'd rereading it, I'd argue that they're both important elements) it's still really boring and weak satire.

The idea that "teenpop doesn't matter to most people" is already the general cultural assumption, the expectation that everyone already holds. The best humor comes out of surprising *reversals* of those kinds of expectations, not just repeating conventional wisdom.

Sorry, but I expect more from the Onion than an easy poke that any Family Channel sitcom writer could come up with. What's the next razor-sharp pop-cultural satire on the Onion chopping block? "Study Shows: Hanson Brothers Look Very Much Like Sisters"?

Probably something more like "Area Man Thinks Hansons Would Make Totally Hot Chicks".

I liked "Clinton To Drop Bomb On Iraq" ages ago. Yeah, it was a simple joke but fuck me if none of us came up with it.