Thread by @SethDillon

The New York Times interviewed itself in order to get to know us a little better. 🤔

nytimes.com/2020/10/16/tec…

Interesting how they call us a "right-wing satire site." The Onion, however, is just satire to them. And yet they acknowledge right on the heels of that description that we "don't pull any punches . . . everything is fair game: the left, the right, Trump."

They do at least note that we get we more traffic and social engagement than The Onion. Perhaps they should have described The Onion as a left-wing, less popular version of The Babylon Bee. 😂

The author (Kevin Roose) says our most engaging articles are "less obviously satirical." But it was Kevin who brought to our attention a few days ago that we had the most engaged article on social media. And it was pretty clearly satirical.

https://twitter.com/kevinroose/status/1316097907318124544

The claim is that we capitalize on confusion. Roose asks a fellow Times reporter if we abuse our status as a satire site to deliberately spread misinformation "under the guise of comedy." Again, why do they never raise that question about The Onion? And why not ask us directly?

Instead of interviewing us, he's interviewing a reporter who previously interviewed us, and he's asking her questions she never asked us. So the responses he gets are just best guesses. On the critical issue of deception, all she can say is, "Well, that’s a great question." 🤦‍♂️

He says we need to "write things that are so obviously made up that they can't reasonably be mistaken for real news." No, we don't. Jokes are funny because of their proximity to the truth, not their distance from it.

Satire exaggerates the truth to make its point. There's almost always a degree of plausibility to it. When our stories are believed, it's an indictment of whoever (or whatever) we're satirizing; it means there's truth to the point we're making. It's not an indictment of satire.

Finally, the joke's on everyone else, not Trump. He's not confused by The Bee; he's a big fan. People close to him have told us as much.