Virginia man killed trying to fight gorilla

[Benuty]

We can only hope that this article will inspire the millions who are silently fighting things to let it be known. They do not have to face this savagery alone. Our sympathy is with the family.

How many others have things in their basements? What about those who face dire primordial black slime in their showers, killer lampreys in their cars, or even snakes on the planes? Somebody should do something!

We at Silent Hill Treatment Centers can help. Give us a call, or just drive up. No appointments necessary. Remember, Silent Hill.

This is brilliant.

[Liberty and Linguistics]

Guys, let's not rip on the OP. Not everyone knows what the Onion is, and he admitted that he was wrong. Let's move on, m'kay?

[Cannot think of a name]

Well played, OP. Well played.

Okay, so here's what I don't get about these kinds of things on the internet and maybe one of these days someone can successfully explain it to me.

Lets grant for a moment what I consider a reasonable benefit of doubt that this person, even if they hadn't heard of The Onion before was able to understand the paper's satirical bent within the first two paragraphs like pretty much anyone would.

But maybe he didn't know that it was a well known satirical paper...or maybe he did. Either way, they thought it'd be funny to post an Onion article as if it was the real thing. Maybe to see how many people would just read the headline and not check the source...is that the joke? Or is the joke getting people to believe that he was so lacking in awareness and critical reading that he truly believed that The Onion was a legit paper?

With the former I guess I can kind of see it, sort of like "Why don't American's read" prank on the NPR website last April's Fools. But in that case it wasn't that much of a success, since the thread is mostly people going for the low hanging fruit of making fun of the idea of The Onion as a real paper.

So I would argue, if it's the former it is not 'well played.'

If it's the latter, I don't understand the joke. "Haha, I got people to think I'm stupid as hell" has never really made sense to me. Every time I try and phrase it, it still ends up sounding more like a slam on the prankster than anyone else. I am missing something clearly since this is a common internet pastime, I just don't understand it.

I would argue that it's not so much 'well played' because I find myself wondering what the endgame was supposed to be rather than assuming he missed the myriad of clues that the story wasn't real, but apparently plenty of people believe that so maybe it is. But again, I don't really get it.

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

The Onion is not a credible news source.

One could argue that The Onion is more credible than a lot of news sources since you can be certain that whatever The Onion posts is going to be made up.

Sure, except the OP apparently didn't know about The Onion being satirical.