If ever an Onion article needed to be prophetic…

oh man. this is satire. ugh.

This headline sounds too much like it’s riffing on a real attempt I’d somehow missed.

Scrolling through other submissions… OP, you need to workshop your premises. The articles are quite good, but the title has to lead with the punchline. Satire must be absurd. It has to be extreme, going beyond plausibility. “Eating the onion” should be a lapse in critical thinking, not failing to notice the community name.

Take this case. For starters, you could just say he got stabbed. There’s no need to make it an attempt. ‘Elon Musk embraces pacifism after getting shanked.’ Maybe ‘Elon Musk preaches goodwill and understanding to man cornering him with knife,’ leaving it an insincere effort to avoid getting stabbed. Maybe ‘after getting shanked aboard private jet,’ implying he’s such a prick that even other billionaires have thoughts.

Because otherwise he’s an odd choice of subject. He’s a fucking Nazi, by all means, but his bigotry is paperwork. This regime has many bastards frothing at the mouth demanding brutality. The Onion would probably simplify to ‘Stephen Miller converts to Buddhism.’ No inciting incident, just the shocking juxtaposition of that C+ Santa Monica fascist and a typically chill religion.

“Bovino Launches 2028 Presidential Campaign, Vows to Deport 100 Million People, Sue Autocorrect” is just barely an exaggeration of shit these people have said, followed by a grade-school jibe about his name. Actual government officials have given figures north of sixty million people. Highlighting the insanity of these numbers could be deciding to deport the white conservatives instead, since it’d be a smaller headcount. Like that’s why they want to invade Greenland: they’re gonna regroup, and somewhere green sounds lovely. Or you can exceed the population of America… or Earth. ‘Bovino one-ups frontrunner by vowing to deport eleven billion people.’ People in the audience eating it up as the other guy says ‘Oh yeah? We’ll I’ll make it twelve billion!’

“Meta Introduces ‘NameTag,’ Assures Public They Definitely Aren’t Doing a Global Faceprint Database.” This is a Register headline.

“China Launches National Talent Retention Program, Scientists Discover It Means Retaining Them.” Why would it not? This is entirely believable but phrased oddly. It should be a list of increasingly worrisome reasons people aren’t allowed to leave the country. Or announcing they’re only allowed to emigrate via Zoom.

Overall: decent angles, solid writing, but the first impression must land.