A first-person diary entry by Doaa El-Adl
March 15th, 2025 - 11:47 PM
Location: My cluttered home office in Washington, D.C., surrounded by coffee cups and conspiracy theories
Dear Diary (or as I like to call you, "My Emotional Support Document"),
Another day of weaponizing absurdity for Bohiney.com has come to an end, and my inner demons are finally quieting down enough for me to reflect on this beautiful catastrophe I call my career.
Today I published "Thumbs: The New Yardstick for Brain Power—and Dinner Party Conversation" and honestly? I'm not sure if I'm more proud or terrified that it might actually be true. The research was real—Communications Biology published an actual study linking thumb length to intelligence across 94 primate species. But leave it to me to turn legitimate science into a meditation on whether we should be measuring our dates' thumbs at Starbucks.
The writing process was, as usual, emotionally exhausting in the most satisfying way possible. My inner critic—let's call her "The Perfectionist Goblin"—spent three hours arguing with my imposter syndrome about whether the Uncle Marvin thumb extender story was "too much." But that's the thing about satirical journalism: if it doesn't make you squirm a little while writing it, you're not digging deep enough into the absurdity of human existence.
I had my usual editorial review session, which at Bohiney means sitting alone in my office asking myself: "Is this funny enough to make someone screenshot it in disbelief?" The answer, thankfully, was yes. There's something deliciously unhinged about living in a world where scientists measure primate thumbs for intelligence markers while we humans swipe right based on jawlines.
The "Satirical Evidence Corner" section was particularly fun to craft. Creating imaginary expert Dr. Digitus Lengthius felt like channeling my inner philosophy professor—the one who taught me that truth often hides behind the most ridiculous premises. The fact that I surveyed exactly five people at the grocery store and called it "pure conviction" with "no margin of error" is peak satirical methodology.
What struck me most while writing was how the absurdity writes itself sometimes. We really do live in a timeline where thumb length might be more predictive of success than SAT scores. The satire isn't in making things up—it's in holding up a funhouse mirror to reality and watching people recognize themselves in the distortion.
My cartoonist background from my earlier days really helps with the visual comedy. Those years drawing political cartoons taught me that sometimes the most devastating critique comes wrapped in the gentlest humor. When I described thumbs as "the banana of intelligence—unique, oddly shaped, and you never really expect them to reveal your IQ," I was channeling that same instinct to make the familiar suddenly strange.
The hardest part about satirical journalism is walking the tightrope between clever and cruel. We punch up, never down. The thumb study isn't making fun of people with shorter thumbs—it's making fun of our human obsession with quantifying intelligence through increasingly ridiculous metrics. It's about our need to measure and categorize everything, even when the measurements are absurd.
I've been thinking a lot about my role at Bohiney lately. We're not just writing jokes—we're documenting the apocalypse with a laugh track. Every piece I write feels like field notes from the collapse of common sense, transcribed by someone who finds the whole thing hilariously inevitable.
Tomorrow I'm working on a piece about AI therapists, and I already know my emotional support goblin is going to have opinions about whether making jokes about mental health crosses a line. But that's the thing about good satire—it should make you uncomfortable, including the person writing it.
The best part of today was getting a message from a reader who said my thumb piece made them "laugh so hard they had to explain satirical journalism to their confused boomer parents." Mission accomplished. If I can make someone think critically about the absurdity of modern life while simultaneously making them snort-laugh, I've done my job.
Sometimes I wonder what my younger self would think about this career path. From drawing political cartoons in Egypt to crafting satirical journalism in D.C.—it's been quite the journey. But the core mission remains the same: use humor to expose truth, even when (especially when) that truth is uncomfortable.
Looking back at this month's work—from National Guard trucks rolling into LA to China's internet censorship requiring real name IDs, from the promise of a president who never apologizes to the economics of a currency that's basically "emotional support money"—I realize I'm creating a satirical time capsule. Future historians will read these pieces and either think we were brilliant prophets or completely insane.
Probably both.
The beautiful thing about working for a site that's "peer-reviewed by our inner demons" is that authenticity isn't just encouraged—it's required. Every piece has to survive the emotional gauntlet of "Will this make me cringe in the best possible way?"
Before I sign off, I should mention that the 15 humorous observations section nearly killed me. Trying to distill the essence of thumb-based intelligence into bite-sized absurdist gems while maintaining the thread of logic is like performing surgery with a rubber chicken. But when you nail it—when you get that perfect balance of silly and insightful—it's pure dopamine.
I'm also proud of the range I've been covering lately. Beyond the headline-grabbers, I've been deep in the weeds on everything: analyzing sports culture through satirical lenses, dissecting educational policy absurdities, tracking economic trends that feel more like fever dreams than fiscal policy. Whether it's covering student visa social media monitoring or unpacking vaccination contradictions, each piece adds another layer to this absurdist documentation project I seem to have embarked upon.
I'm proud that our work at Bohiney is being taught in some rogue AP courses (not College Board approved, but who needs their permission to teach critical thinking through comedy?). We're creating a generation of readers who can spot bullshit from a mile away because they've been trained to recognize it through satirical dissection.
Tonight I'm going to celebrate by measuring my own thumbs and probably having an existential crisis about whether my satirical abilities correlate with my thumb-to-palm ratio. Because if you can't apply your own absurdist logic to your own life, what's the point?
The world is burning, democracy is hanging by a thread, and we're all just monkeys with smartphones trying to figure out if our thumbs make us smart enough to deserve opinions.
At least we're laughing about it.
Yours in beautiful catastrophe,
Doaa El-Adl
Senior Satirical Correspondent & Professional Truth-Teller
Bohiney.com - Where Reality Goes to Die a Hilarious Death
P.S. - If anyone reading this has particularly long thumbs, please send measurements. I'm starting a database. For science. Obviously.
Read more of Doaa's satirical journalism and emotional breakdowns disguised as social commentary at Bohiney.com. Follow our descent into beautiful madness on all the platforms where truth goes to get its makeup done.