15 pieces of pop culture that may have been influenced by South Park

The Onion

Offering fake news before #FakeNews was a thing that existed in our lexicon, The Onion parodies the way in which we receive our news. Technically, The Onion existed long before South Park, but in 2007, the organization began publishing satirical news audio and video online, as the Onion News Network. Now, it’s hard not to see the interconnectedness of the humor between the two. Both are absurd and ask us to routinely suspend our disbelief in lieu of a good chuckle, but both are often misconstrued as reliable news delivery sources. They are not, by the way, reliable news sources.

Although The Onion is mostly fun and games, it is, at times, overtly political. The stories are often send-ups of actual headlines and current events, but a closer eye reveals a commentary that is often highly critical and provocative of progressive politics.

If you want to really consider influences, I say that South Park has been highly impacted by The Onion over the years, and borrows pretty heavily from its sleight of hand and subterfuge. It’s a lot easier to sway someone to agree with you when you are making them laugh at silly things, and The Onion has been doing this very thing since the late ’80s. It’s really quite brilliant, especially if you consider how many times articles from the site have been linked to  in order to prove the very thing they are parodying. Sometimes life really is fair.

Best of: “Harry Potter Books Spark Rise in Satanism Among Children” and “Kim Jong-Un Named The Onion’s Sexiest Man Alive For 2012”