‘Literally Unbelievable’ is The Onion Plus Facebook Equals Hilarity

The social news aspect of Facebook makes for lots of interesting political and social conversations on a variety of subjects- abortion, circumcision, tipping at restaurants…

However, users of the site are constantly and inadvertently getting punked by satire newspaper The Onion. While The Onion predates the web, it used to be a bit easier for armchair pundits to identify the satirical paper in context. When not clearly placed beside other obviously satirical articles, sometimes confirmation bias steps in and people sound off on the fake news.

Individually, these reactions have floated around the internet for some time, to much derision. (Most surreptitious sharers blank out identifying details to protect the dopey.) But a new Tumblr has gathered all these outraged outpourings of misdirected bile in one handy place. Literally Unbelievable is a very apt name for the reactions to these articles, the most common of which currently is The Onion‘s ‘Abortionplex’ piece.

Have you ever encountered one of these convos in the wild?