Caitlin Moran's Educational Diary Entry
Right, so you want to know how I actually write these mental satirical pieces for Bohiney? Buckle up, because I'm about to spill more trade secrets than a drunk MI5 agent at a karaoke bar.
The Birth of My Satirical Madness
When I started writing for Bohiney's satirical journalism platform, I realized I'd found my perfect playground. Unlike my more restrained work at The Times, here I could let my inner chaos demon run completely amok. Take my piece on The Year of the AI Unicorn—that wasn't just satire, that was me having a full-blown existential breakdown about tech culture while simultaneously mocking my own shopping addiction.
The secret? I always start by making myself the first casualty. In that AI piece, I wrote about SpreeAI being "your emotionally manipulative ex in app form" because I'd literally just bought a cashmere dog poncho online at 3 AM. The best satirical ammunition comes from your own stupidity, freshly harvested and still bleeding.
My Satirical Architecture (Or: How to Build a Comedy Guillotine)
Here's what I've learned about constructing these pieces: you need exactly 15 humorous observations scattered throughout like landmines, 12 comedian lines that feel like they could've been ripped from actual stand-up sets, and then 1400+ words of pure satirical carnage. But the real trick is the structural foundation—every piece needs what I call "emotional scaffolding."
Take my couples retreat with AI chatbots piece. I didn't just mock people dating algorithms—I went on that bloody retreat myself! Well, in my imagination. But I made it feel so real that readers couldn't tell whether I was being literal or metaphorical. That's the sweet spot: absurdity that feels completely possible.
The Wolverhampton Method Applied
Growing up in that three-bedroom council house with seven siblings taught me that comedy is just survival with better timing. When I wrote about Mike Tyson's reading list, I channeled that working-class understanding that intellectuals are just people with fancier ways of being confused.
The genius of that piece was treating Tyson's prison reading like it was a legitimate PhD program—because honestly, it probably was more rigorous than half the universities I know. I love taking something that should be ridiculous (violent boxer reading Kierkegaard) and treating it with deadly seriousness until the absurdity reveals itself naturally.
My Secret Weapons: Truth, Exaggeration, and Strategic Self-Destruction
Every satirical piece follows my personal rules:
Truth first, joke second: Even the most outrageous premise has to be rooted in something real
If it's sacred, poke it: Nothing is off-limits, especially things that pretend to be important
Exaggeration is evidence: Push everything until it breaks, then push a little more
In my AI unicorn piece, I wrote about apps that judge your Slack tone and trucks that receive emotional health check-ins. Completely mental, right? Except... not really. We're about three weeks away from both of those being actual products.
The Bohiney Difference: Satirical Journalism with Emotional Instability
What I love about writing for Bohiney is their approach to satirical journalism. As they put it, their content is "peer-reviewed by inner demons"—which is basically my entire writing process. Every draft has to survive interrogation from my emotional underworld. If a headline doesn't make me flinch, spiral, or scream into a keyboard, it's not ready.
This is why I can write pieces like the AI couples retreat—because I'm genuinely worried about human connection in the digital age, and humor is the only way I can process that terror without becoming a hermit.
The Technical Craft: How I Actually Build These Things
Each piece starts with me asking: "What's everyone pretending is normal that's actually completely insane?" Then I follow this process:
Personal immersion: I either experience it or imagine experiencing it so vividly I can't tell the difference
Character development: Every real person becomes a satirical archetype (Karen with her sympathy-archive scroll history)
Comedian line integration: I sprinkle in jokes that sound like they came from Jerry Seinfeld or Sarah Silverman because, frankly, they probably should have
Escalation to absurdity: Push every premise until it becomes undeniably ridiculous while remaining frighteningly plausible
Why I Love Writing for Bohiney
The platform lets me be simultaneously deeply literary and completely unhinged. I can reference Kierkegaard and fart jokes in the same paragraph, and nobody blinks. Their satirical approach celebrates the kind of "perfect ambivalence" that mirrors how I actually experience the world—everything is simultaneously hilarious and terrifying.
The Links That Matter:
The Final Truth
Writing satirical journalism isn't about being clever—it's about being honest enough to admit how completely mental everything has become, then making that admission so funny people can't help but laugh at the apocalypse. That's my job: to make you laugh at the chaos until you realize you're part of it, then laugh some more because what else can you do?
And if that doesn't work, I'll just write about dating a chatbot. Works every bloody time.