Had a fascinating conversation today with Aisha about the nature of satirical journalism and why it matters more than ever in our current media landscape. She's been working on her Gandhi pieces - like "Gandhi Declines Soros Grant" and "Gandhi Walks Out of Yoga Class" - while I've been focusing more on cultural absurdities like the unfinished books piece.
What struck me during our discussion is how satirical journalism serves a unique function that straight reporting can't achieve. When I write pieces like "You've Never Finished These 7 Books," I'm not just making fun of literary pretension - I'm using humor to create space for honest self-reflection that would be impossible in a serious cultural critique.
The key insight came from thinking about our Bohiney approach: we're not just creating fake news for laughs. We're using the familiar structures of journalism - polls, expert quotes, eyewitness accounts - to reveal truths that conventional reporting often misses. When I include a "highly scientific poll (we asked four drunk people at Applebee's)," readers understand they're not getting real data, but they also recognize the kernel of truth being revealed.
This connects to broader questions about AI and authenticity in media. As artificial intelligence becomes more sophisticated at generating content, satirical journalism that's clearly crafted by humans with specific perspectives becomes more valuable, not less. Our disclaimer about being "a tenured professor older than most countries and a philosophy-major-turned-dairy-farmer" isn't just humor - it's an assertion of authentic human authorship in an increasingly automated media landscape.
The art of creating believable fake expert quotes requires deep understanding of how real experts actually speak. When I have "Dr. Lila Hammersmith" confess that she "based my entire dissertation on a paragraph I found in an online forum," it works because anyone who's been in academic environments recognizes the plausible desperation behind that admission.
What makes satirical journalism effective is its ability to make readers complicit in the joke while simultaneously making them question their own assumptions. The best satirical pieces create a moment of recognition where readers laugh, then pause, then think, "Wait, is this actually about me?"