Clickhole (Onion's Buzzfeed Spin-Off.)

[Bored of Canada]

I've never once laughed at the Onion. I sometimes find the titles of articles mildly clever, but that is where the joke lands, and then they always ruin it by following it up with an article hammering the joke home, winking at the camera.

They've just come out with their new site Clickhole, which is a very obvious attack on Buzzfeed and listing sites like Cracked, with deliberately clickbaity headings with inane content in them. I appreciate this stuff, it doesn't make me laugh, and like The Onion, I kinda wish they got a lot angrier. Poured some genuine rage into them and go on the proper attack of this fucking shit. Though perhaps it's down to taste.

http://www.clickhole.com/article/top-12-game-thrones-inspired-baby-names-280

http://www.clickhole.com/article/worlds-dumbest-criminals-270

http://www.clickhole.com/article/5-iconic-movie-scenes-were-actually-fake-201

I still prefer my one, where Elliott Rodger submitted an abridged buzzfeed post of his manifesto, aided by Parks and Recreation Gifs, as these younger generations don't have time to be digesting 150 page doctrines.

But yeah, this is cute, but I want more fucking anger out of them. I want it to be bold and audacious, I want it to be a slap in the face to Buzzfeed and Cracked, and the people who use it, so they realise just how tedious and vapid these sites are. There's not any high quality writing or knowledge in them, it's just little bits of manipulated trivia and speculation, trying to make it sound as dramatic and exciting as possible, all stuck together with other inane wank in order to keep people clicking and making money from you.

Sure, it's not hurting anyone, but people putting out millions of articles with pointless wank out into the world, and a society of people sharing them, reading them, we are definitely allowed to criticise and attack it. 

[BritishHobo]

Nice to see someone taking it on at least. Cheers for linking it.

This one's got the stupid captions down pat: http://www.clickhole.com/article/10-hilarious-chairs-think-theyre-people-235

And some of the quizzes are nicely ludicrous: "How many of these Friends episodes have you seen?", "Which Hungry Hungry Hippo Are You?"

But yeah, it would be nice to see a bit more venom about it all. Turning information into little Christmas Cracker food pellets in return for hits. I made a thread a while back about that site Upworthy, which will do things like a series of time-lapse photographs but you have to share the article on Facebook in order to see the last picture. Desperate shit like that.

It's quite a new site, so hopefully it's just settling in, and as time goes on they'll start to try more stuff about the clickbait nature of the sites themselves.

[Bored of Canada]

THIS. This is what I wanted from this site.
http://www.clickhole.com/video/what-adorable-little-girl-says-will-melt-your-hear-286

That Criminal one I linked in the first post really makes me smile, but I'm a sucker for people sarcastically insulting people with mundane insults like "Dum-Dum" and "Einstein".
It brings me a strange joy, and I can't not grin at it.

EDIT:
It gives you shallow achievements and badges for clicking through the multi-page dumb fucking slide-shows, which I adore.

[BritishHobo]

Now that one's fantastic.

"Let's look at the big picture for a minute."

[BritishHobo]

"This Video Seems Silly, But Makes A Good Point."

I'm glad you linked this site, I'm really enjoying it. There's a lot of different things to spear (this one vaguely puts me in mind of that wanky 'Look Up' video that got traction on these sites a month or so back as A Video Everybody Needs To Stop And Watch), so it should be interesting to follow.

EDIT: Actually, this is probably a better example: http://www.clickhole.com/video/its-nice-remember-good-things-life-285. That whole thing of presenting some vague life-affirming gumph about what really matters in life, churned out purely so people will spread it on Facebook as 'so true :)' and 'so important :)' and net them more ad revenue.

[choie]

THIS. This is what I wanted from this site.
http://www.clickhole.com/video/what-adorable-little-girl-says-will-melt-your-hear-286

That is delicious!

The only problem is that I want to share it...yet if I do, will I not become the thing I hate?

(Seriously, that girl's reading is fucking terrific, and only gets better as she talks about the viewer's

Spoiler alert

emply, lonely, vacuum of a soul

[close]

.)

Edited to be honest: I actually rather enjoy some of the listy articles on Cracked. There. I admitted it.  Of course, many of them are repetitive but now and then you get some interesting factoids or images. I particularly like things like "20 species only discovered since 1900" or "10 most fucked-up mysteries that have never been solved."  Is there hope for me or is this a gateway drug? Am I now gonna find myself posting those ubiquitous e-greeting card images with the pseudo-retro graphics featuring Victorian or 1950s women saying sassy things like "I can go from zero to Bitch in 60 seconds"?

[Noodle Lizard]

Why do you want this and The Onion to be "angry" when they're not really designed to be?  There are other avenues for that, surely.  It's not as if it's one of those stand-ups who talks about comedy having to be furious and "grabbing you by the balls" and then goes into a long routine about farts sounding louder in the shower.

As far as this ClickHole thing goes, especially, I find it hard to imagine anyone getting genuinely angry over Cracked or Buzzfeed.  Even the sentiments expressed by that "Adorable Girl Video" felt pretty stretched.

For what it's worth, I think The Onion is perfectly decent and have an impressive hit-rate with me, especially given the amount of content they put out.  Is it the best comedy/satire ever?  No.  But I don't really expect it to be, I'm just glad it exists.

[Thursday]

That is delicious!

The only problem is that I want to share it...yet if I do, will I not become the thing I hate?

(Seriously, that girl's reading is fucking terrific, and only gets better as she talks about the viewer's

Spoiler alert

emply, lonely, vacuum of a soul

[close]

.)

Edited to be honest: I actually rather enjoy some of the listy articles on Cracked. There. I admitted it. 

Cracked are different anyway, they do a lot of list articles but they tend to put some thought and research into them.

[George Oscar Bluth II]

OK, this quiz about NBA player's pet vultures got me: http://www.clickhole.com/quiz/nba-finals-quiz-how-well-do-you-know-players-vultu-294

Correct! LeBron James named his pet vulture LeBron James.

[chand]

Why do you want this and The Onion to be "angry" when they're not really designed to be?

I would actually say The Onion does political anger really well at times. A lot of their gun control stuff in particular encapsulates the raw frustration people get arguing the topic in a nation where millions will fight for their right to have a fucking gun no matter how many dead children there are.

I quite like Clickhole so far, it's doing a decent job for what it is, but there is a fundamental difficulty in parodying this stuff because Buzzfeed and its clones are pretty self-aware. Stuff like Us Vs Th3m is shot through with ironic meta eyebrow raising, happy to position itself as a shameless hub of content thievery and clickbait, and they're already doing winking "lol look at how stupid our clickbait is! Click it though!" stuff. Indeed Us Vs Th3m went to the extent of letting users create their own quizzes, thereby doing their own click-generating work for them for free. Last night I followed a link to a Buzzfeed article of pictures of Thierry Henry being handsome. The person who posted it knew it was shameless clickbait, I knew it was shameless clickbait, and I'm sure Buzzfeed did too. And we all cheapened ourselves. The big victory of these new media content hub behemoths is that they've relentlessly pushed it to the point where they can exist as knowing self-parody, 90% of the clicks are from irony-drenched internet age youth who know Upworthy is fucking stupid but have it in their bookmarks anyway. The sites themselves don't care how many levels of meta-irony you went through to click on 'The 150 Best Gifsets Of Jennifer Lawrence Literally Owning The Entire Universe Forever By Doing Or Saying A Cute Thing', or 'R Kelly Was Statutory-Raping This Teen And Really Needed To Pee. What He Did Next Will Blow Your Mind!', they just want you to give them your sweet, sweet page views even if you despise them.

[Quincey]

A lot of Cracked's contact is quite good, but I get sick of them using the word "insane" in so many of their titles.

[Noodle Lizard]

I don't have much against Cracked.  They can be willfully contrarian sometimes and hire the occasional really bad writer[nb]this, in particular, is fucking absurdly mind-fuckingly insanely stupid:  http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-classic-horror-movies-that-get-more-love-than-they-deserve/[nb]'Rosemary's Baby' is overrated, watch 'The Devil's Advocate' instead????? FUCKING SERIOUSLY?[/nb][/nb], but they serve their purpose.

[up_the_hampipe]

The Onion could get pretty venomous sometimes, I thought http://www.theonion.com/articles/daniel-tosh-chuckles-through-own-violent-rape,28769/

[Tiny Poster]

A lot of Cracked's contact is quite good, but I get sick of them using the word "insane" in so many of their titles.

That Has Blown My Mind

[Bored of Canada]

Clickhole sounds like dickhole.

[popcorn]

Why do you want this and The Onion to be "angry" when they're not really designed to be?

I've never understood this sort of criticism. I think it's quite reasonable to criticise something for being not as good a thing as another thing it could have been, isn't it? That was a good sentence, wasn't it?

[ajsmith]

Cracked are different anyway, they do a lot of list articles but they tend to put some thought and research into them.

This Coors light fart of an "article" excepted presumably - http://www.cracked.com/funny-4302-salvador-dali/

It's actually impressive how the writer was able to take a fascinatingly bizzare subject that would be perfect for a Cracked article and convert it a piece so entirely boring, dumb and unfunny.

[Thomas]

Thanks for linking us up, BoC. Unlike you, I've laughed at the Onion aplenty. Particularly the Film Review feature, recently.

I've laughed already at this new site, just on reading the title of this article -

5 Iconic Movie Scenes That Were Actually Fake

[An Actual Propeller]

I just got linked to the "Adorable Little Girl" video and thought it was great.  Anything that takes a swipe at these insipid clickbait bullshit websites deserves to be praised and, ironically enough, shared.

However, this Buzzfeed takedown by Maddox (thebestpageintheuniverse.com "fame") may provide the anger that some of you are asking for.  It isn't a parody, just a rant, really.

[Stoneage Dinosaurs]

This Coors light fart of an "article" excepted presumably - http://www.cracked.com/funny-4302-salvador-dali/

It's actually impressive how the writer was able to take a fascinatingly bizzare subject that would be perfect for a Cracked article and convert it a piece so entirely boring, dumb and unfunny.

In fairness, I think that was from back when Cracked allowed user-generated content, which is, in the vast majority of cases, shit.

[BritishHobo]

God, I hate Maddox's videos. The arrogance that makes his written stuff funny falls completely flat when you actually see him saying it.

[lazarou]

Certainly a bold move from the Onion cross-promoting that bait-and-switch Calvin and Hobbes clip on Facebook today. It's gone over about as well as you'd expect.

[BritishHobo]

What clip is that?

[lazarou]

The fairly innocuous-looking but extremely NSFW "If You Grew Up With 'Calvin And Hobbes,' You Need To Watch This Right Now". The FB blurb mentions a loving tribute animated by dedicated fans or similar. It links straight to

Spoiler alert

a video of them fucking in a variety of different positions.

[close]

[Bored of Canada]

The fairly innocuous-looking but extremely NSFW "If You Grew Up With 'Calvin And Hobbes,' You Need To Watch This Right Now". The FB blurb mentions a loving tribute animated by dedicated fans or similar. It links straight to

Spoiler alert

a video of them fucking in a variety of different positions.

[close]

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHA

FUCKING HELL.

Fucking hell. I didn't read your Spoiler before I clicked and therefore that has been the hardest I've laughed in a long time. Hahahahahahahahahaha

I thoroughly enjoy this website. The more I look, the more venomous, audacious and bold it appears. Genuinely hilarious too.
 
The Mad Men quiz was great. Need to figure out a way to share it so I can suck my friends who do those fucking quizzes in, and disappoint them.
http://www.clickhole.com/quiz/which-mad-men-character-are-you-220

EDIT: Just looked up the response to that on the Onion facebook page, like you said Lazarou.
Such a visceral reaction to it. I can't deny how hard I laughed. Comedy is all about delivery, and a large part of delivery is generally about subverting and surprising what the audience expects, and this was such an unexpected result, and that music under the bottom of it...

Hahaha Christ. I'm giggling just thinking of people's responses to it.

[lazarou]

The FB page was the perfect delivery method for it. Even the "from our sister site" intro usually precedes links to something fairly sincere from the AV club.

So glad I didn't share this without watching it first.

If the point was shock value & "teaching us a lesson" about bait & click sites. Why not have them doing something that didn't involve

Spoiler alert

porn

[close]

?!?! Don't you think that most of us would be saying well played?

"Shock us, but in a nice comfortable way please."

And they still keep coming. Amazing.

[Bored of Canada]

The FB page was the perfect delivery method for it. Even the "from our sister site" intro usually precedes links to something fairly sincere from the AV club.
"Shock us, but in a nice comfortable way please."

And they still keep coming. Amazing.

The funny thing is, when you unfollow a page, your comments disappear. So everyone who said they were unfollowing are full of shit.

[Thomas]

Outspoken unfollowers of The Onion on Facebook are the worst ever people.

[Bored of Canada]

Outspoken unfollowers of The Onion on Facebook are the worst ever people.

I'm deleting my CaB account guys. I'm leaving forever. Goodbye!

[Bored of Canada]

Fucking leaving guys. Saying my goodbyes in my flounce thread. Sick of all the PERSONAL bullshit on here. People talking about themselves instead of comedy.

Fucking drama. Don't need it. So I'm leaving.