The Onion is America's Finest News Source (so it says).
It's also a joke. But that's apparently news to those who have otherwise been letting the Internet rage fly against The Onion's brand of spoofed news.
Here's the deal: The Onion is a satire publication and website. It makes fun of real news in a creative and often extreme fashion, which makes it all the more laughable when someone posts a link to an Onion story alongside some scathing comment about the state of society/politics/puppies.
We wish we could make that last part up, but we're not. In fact, The Onion seems to confuse so many online users that a blog has been set up to record instances where fake news meets real-life shock. It's called "Literally Unbelievable," and it's—literally—just that. Users submit the horrific responses their friends have made to fake news articles for publication on the site. There are no comments and no "likes" on Literally Unbelievable: Just responses the news (or the not-news).
The site's already hit a sea of popularity for it's brief lifespan. That's right: Literally Unbelievable began just last Friday. The creator, 24-year-old freelance writer Hudson Hongo, started the site in response to the various reactions he was seeing to The Onion's "Abortionplex" article.
In the fake story, The Onion suggests that Planned Parenthood recently opened an $8 billion "abortionplex" in what's presumed to be Topeka, Kansas. The fake 900,000 square-foot facility can allegedly perform one abortion every three seconds, or a million abortions per month.
Naturally, responses to such a heated topic—albeit a fake, heated topic—were large.
"Chilling to stare evil in the face," wrote one user in a Facebook response to The Onion's article. "I pray this will end like the Titanic, Swiftly [sic] and absolutely!" wrote another.
Perfect fodder, says Hongo, for a site that pays tribute to those who get upset over satire.
"I found the sheer number of people reading Onion articles sincerely (across the political spectrum) a surprise," said Hongo in an interview with Mashable. "I wasn't sure whether it was crueler to share these remarkable texts publicly or to keep them to myself. Then I got bored and just did it."
But, true to Internet form, even the existence of Literally Unbelievable has drawn criticism of its own.
"This "Literally Unbelievable" Tumblr irks me no end," writes Navneet Alang on Twitter. "Elitism masquerading as internet hipsterism."
So how long until someone sets up a Tumblr to record these posts?
For more from David, follow him on Twitter @TheDavidMurphy.