(Columbus, Ohio)  The Ohio State University, long known to be a nexus of brilliant and original thought, passionate and innovative thinkers, groundbreaking research, and FOOTBALLFOOTBALLFOOTBALL, has once again uncovered evidence of something so shock-boggling that it could very well alter the entire landscape of written comedy as we know it: Evidence has been found that parody news articles are the lowest form of comedy. Spearheading the spear of finding-out for this fact was one strikingly handsome student researcher named Ryan Greer. No relation.

I caught up with Mr. Greer in the Men’s Restroom of a campus building, hoping I would be able to drain some knowledge from his big brain. Though at first he was reluctant, due to a combination of the secretive nature of his research and also because he was urinating when I confronted him, eventually he acquiesced to my persistent badgering. We headed to the word-stuff paper-racks, or “library” as he called it, and I began grilling Greer like a sexy salmon filet.

“Gimme the real deal, here, kid,” I detectived, hardboiledly, “I know you’ve been doing research into that filthy travesty and disgrace to actual journalism, parody news articles!”

“Yeah, yeah, here, lemme show you. This is our campus,” he explained, calling up on his laptop with a few rapid keystrokes, an incredibly detailed model of OSU, complete with little labeled figures representing each student walking around. It was kind of like the Marauder’s Map, except made using hundreds of illegal security cameras and wiretapping instead of magic. Greer rapped the screen lightly. “We’ll use this to examine the effects of parody news pieces on campus bullshit.”

“Campus whatnow?”

Dr. Mr. Sir Greer explained to me that bullshittery was, evidently, a physical quality to the atmosphere, which could be measured by physical instruments. “I have a simple model that will help you understand, even with your stupid, stupid, English-major brain,” he explained, “Think of it this way: Humans beings by nature are really quantum superposed electromagnetic frameworks suspended in the aetherical substrate. These hyperstatic lattices resonate with reality in order to acquire knowledge, or as we in science-ers call it, ‘facticallityness.’ So, when those things occur which may constitute ‘bullshit,’ this jars the quantum nth-dimension-spherical ionometrics, thereby misaligning the local quantum ener-vibe and distorting spacetime. This leads to all the expected issues and physical results. Simple, right?”

I personally understood none of it, but he had said “quantum” at least three or four times, so I assumed he was right. I gestured for him to go on, and he layered over his suspiciously exact model and Doppler-esque color map which, according to him, measured the intensity of the local bullshit.

The majority of the map was a subdued light green to yellow, with the expected bursts into crimsons, fuchsias and violets over the Art and English buildings.

“Now, let’s focus in more,” Greer said, and pointing with a nifty green laser pointer at a miniscule drop of maximum intensity in some random building.

“ZOOM. ENHANCE.” He bellowed. “ZOOM. ENHANCE. ENHANCE. PHOTOSHOP. DISTORT. ZOOOOM.” Nothing happened on the screen. Sheepishly he instead clicked the little magnifying glass in the upper left corner and brought us all the way down to reveal…

“We’ve done lots of hacking and other such science-type things, and have come to only one conclusion: This is the server where the Fake Lantern is hosted.”

He then went on to describe how in-depth the research into this phenomenon had gotten since this discovery. He pulled up several graphs, with lots of lines and figures all over them pointing in many different directions. They looked very professional, like they had taken at least a half an hour in Excel to make.

“Charting Laziness vs. Newsiness, Self-Indulgence vs. Easiness, and Stupid vs. Dumbtarded vs. Total Horseshittery (among many, many other charts and versuses) we can come to only one conclusion: Parody News articles are total babyplay kiddie shit for dumb-people who can’t write real comedy. It’s basically the easiest and dumbshittedest manner of writing and people who do it are stupid losers who suck.”

He had a fair point. The only real effort typically exerted in the production of a comedy piece tends to be to the headline – A briefly amusing one liner, to which the audience may respond, “Ha, yes, I have understood this reference.” Looking over some analyses with Ryan, the numbers all indicated that everything written after the headline was primarily just phoning in a half-assed four paragraphs vaguely related to the premise. This is interspersed with occasional cuts to made-up opinions supposedly from random passerby, simultaneously giving the impression of relevance while simultaneously never being funny.

Jeffrey Ostermann, 18, was a random passerby in the library whose opinion on the research sought, so I could add it to my article, thereby simultaneously…well, you know. He had this to say: “What? No man, fuck you, the Fake Lantern is hilarious. Now leave me alone, your fedora is fucking stupid and you smell like a calzone.”

Truly, the children are our future.

Greer produced a number of figures he claimed to have uncovered in his research, evidence of the decrepitation of Parody News’s so-called “humor:” 81% of pieces, “aren’t even that funny,” with a strong 93% having articles, “less interesting than the headline.” Furthermore, 63% fall back on the “sloppy, lazy, and idiotic technique of just making up ridiculous statistics,” and an unbelievable 47% commit the CARDINAL SIN OF JOURNALISM: Using 1st person perspective.

I pondered these assorted TruFaxx™ and all the implications that they implied. Did these findings and allegations of laziness impact traditional, real, important, and awesome Actual Journalism, such as the variety which I practiced. Possibly. Maybe. Further, idly spectulatory sentence fragments. To learn more, I turned to OSU’s Journalism Department and sought their opinion of the findings.

“I don’t figure it changes anything at all,” offered Dr. Oldperson O’Professorguy. “Everyone knows that journalism is full of hacks, anyway. It’s just the degree and career you choose when you want to call yourself a writer without going to the trouble of being creative or crafting worthwhile prose. The only difference between that and parody writers is that the parodies at least put in the effort to come up with a humorous headline.”

I’m certain that probably at least some of those things are most likely definitely true. Wise words. It seems that in the Dark Times ahead, it will fall to the readers to decide: Support parody news (and, by extension, Communism), or uphold the banner of Ameri-Liber-Patrio-dom and read good, old-fashioned, well-crafted prose…like the Sundial.

#nailedit

–Ryan Greer, Contributor