Weigel

Seven People Who Think the NRA Actually Wants to Ban Movies

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Humorist Andy Borowitz, a one-man version of The Onion with a hit/miss ratio that it’s probably not polite to talk about, has been hired by The New Yorker. Because 40-odd percent of the Internet consists of sarcastic 20-and-30-somethings snarking at bad content, the Borowitz blog’s short run of unfunny satires has been mocked and dissected and parodied. It’s also revealed that people generally believe things if they have New Yorker html. Yesterday, Borowitz wrote a pretty obvious joke about the NRA calling for movies, not guns, to be banned in the wake of the Aurora, Col. shootings. (The real NRA has made no statement on the massacre.) It’s received more than 12,000 Facebook shares, as many as a pretty good long New Yorker feature. One major source of the sharing: People who don’t like the NRA, assume it has vast power, and immediately think the story is true. Screen shot 2012-07-23 at 2.11.56 PM Screen shot 2012-07-23 at 2.12.02 PM
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Apologies to Buzzfeed, which I think has patented this form of Internet observation. *Why are you looking at me?