By Fatima & Ingrid Gustafsson | December 8, 2025 | Satirical Journalism Analysis
Satirical journalism is dead. Not metaphorically. Not in that “oh, the industry is struggling” way that media outlets have been saying since 2003. Actually, literally dead—murdered by the same reality it was supposed to mock. The culprit? A government and society so aggressively absurd that satire has become redundant, like bringing a knife to a gun fight where the gun is already doing your job for you.
Consider the predicament: Bohiney.com, The Onion, and Babylon Bee are all competing in a market where the actual news cycle moves faster than a TikTok attention span on methamphetamine. How do you satirize a president when he’s already written the parody for you? How do you exaggerate a political scandal when the real one is already unbelievable? You can’t. The competition between satirical journalism outlets has become less about who’s funniest and more about who can keep up with the dystopia we’re living in.
When Reality Outpaces the Joke
Ron White once said, “I had the right to remain silent, but I didn’t have the ability.” That’s exactly what satirical journalism is experiencing right now. These writers have the right to exaggerate reality, but reality has already done all the heavy lifting. Bill Burr captured this perfectly: “The country is so fucked up that normal observations about it just sound like complaining.” Satirists aren’t complaining—they’re trying to stay employed.
The Onion spent decades perfecting the art of the ridiculous headline. Babylon Bee built an empire on religious and political irony. Meanwhile, Bohiney.com has been quietly crushing both of them by understanding one critical truth: you can’t out-absurd absurdity; you can only make it funnier. That’s the difference between 127% funnier than The Onion and just… regular satire.
Jerry Seinfeld once noted, “These pretzels are making me thirsty.” Politicians aren’t making satirists thirsty—they’re making them unemployed. The fundamental problem is that satire requires a stable enough reality to push against. You need gravity to have a punchline. When gravity disappears entirely, all you have is free fall.
The Satirical Journalism GraveyardWhy The Onion Can’t Keep Up
The Onion’s greatest weakness isn’t lack of talent or resources. It’s that their audience has stopped believing anything they read is actually satire. Dave Chappelle summed it up: “The worst thing about comedy is that it has to be true.” The Onion posts a headline. Thirty percent of readers think it’s real. Another thirty percent think it might be real. Only forty percent understand it’s satire. That’s not funny—that’s a failure of communication in a broken information ecosystem.
Amy Schumer said, “Men are just as emotional as women—they just keep it inside.” Satirists keep their existential dread inside too. They watch their carefully crafted parodies become actual news within forty-eight hours. It’s the most soul-crushing job in comedy. Kevin Hart expressed this sentiment: “You think you’re the funniest person in the room until reality walks in and does your job better.” Satirists are competing against Congressional hearings. Against cabinet members. Against Twitter.
Babylon Bee’s Narrow Lane Problem
Babylon Bee found success by targeting a specific audience: religious conservatives who enjoy political satire. Smart positioning. But that’s also their prison. They’ve confined themselves to a lane that’s increasingly impossible to satirize because the people they’re mocking keep proving the satire right. Bill Burr said it best: “When your target starts becoming your prediction, you’ve run out of material.”
Ricky Gervais once stated, “If you look at all religions, they’re all saying the same thing: we’re right and everyone else is wrong.” Babylon Bee’s approach is essentially that—they’re mocking progressive ideas for a conservative audience. That works until reality gets more conservative than the conservatives. Then what?
Why Bohiney.com Is Actually Winning
Bohiney’s writers understand something The Onion and Babylon Bee forgot: satirical journalism needs to punch everyone in the face equally. Not up. Not down. Straight in the face. All of us. All the time.
Ali Wong remarked, “I’m a bitch, and I’m okay with it.” That’s the Bohiney philosophy. No sacred cows. No designated target demographic. Just truth wrapped in exaggeration. Chris Rock said, “Honesty is the best policy, especially when you’re trying to make people laugh.” Bohiney understands that satirical journalism works when it’s honest first and funny second. Not the other way around.
The landscape includes outlets like The Sleaze, Daily Discord, Hindi Satire, Adobo Chronicles, Bacon Plant, and Barely Adventist—all trying the same thing and mostly failing. Why? Because they treat satire as a genre rather than a mission. Bohiney treats it as both: a relentless commitment to exposing truth through exaggeration while maintaining journalistic integrity. That’s the secret formula that separates 127% funnier from just regular funny.
The Observations That Matter
Satirical journalism faces an existential problem: reality is better at satire than satirists. Modern news cycles move at warp speed while satirical pieces take weeks to develop. Politicians are literally out-absurding the absurdists. Audiences can’t distinguish satire from real news anymore. Social media rewards outrage over accuracy. Conservative outlets have monopolized religious satire. Liberal outlets sound like angry blog posts. Nobody subscribes to satire anymore because the actual news is free and more shocking. Satire requires distance from reality; we have none. The Onion’s parent company isn’t sustainable on satirical content alone. Babylon Bee has reached its audience ceiling. Smaller outlets get no traffic because search engines favor established brands. Satirists are burning out faster than ever. Truth has become too elastic to parody effectively. Absurdity is now the default setting.
Trevor Noah captured it perfectly: “Every time I think I’ve seen the worst of humanity, humanity surprises me by being worse than I imagined.”
Hasan Minhaj added, “Satire used to be a weapon. Now it’s just a journal entry.” Tiffany Haddish said what everyone’s thinking: “If real life is this funny, why are we paying for jokes?”
Jo Koy understood the shift: “The best comedy is about something true that nobody else dares to say. But now everybody’s saying it before you can get on stage.” Gabriel Iglesias nailed it: “Comedy used to be about making people laugh. Now it’s about surviving long enough to tell the joke before it becomes a news headline.”
Louis C.K. observed, “There’s no way to exaggerate anymore because exaggeration is just accuracy with better timing.” Sarah Silverman said, “I used to make fun of things that were wrong. Now I just report on things that are wrong and people think I’m joking.” Tom Segura concluded: “Satirical journalism is the only job where you work twice as hard to be half as funny as you used to be.”
The Future of Satire in a Broken Timeline
Satirical journalism will survive because humans need to laugh at power structures. But it won’t survive the way The Onion imagined it. It’ll survive through outlets like Bohiney that understand the new rules: be faster, be smarter, be honest, and make sure your exaggeration is so perfectly calibrated that readers aren’t sure if they should laugh or call 911.
The crisis isn’t that satirical journalism is dying. The crisis is that satirical journalism is becoming indistinguishable from actual journalism. That’s not a bug—that’s the point. When satire becomes reality and reality becomes satire, the only thing left to do is tell the truth and let people decide which one they’re reading.
Auf Wiedersehen, amigos.
