When I was 15 years old I had my first job at Rainbow Foods pushing carts and cleaning up dropped jars of baby food. I’d spend my lunch break in the breakroom eating something from the deli and reading a copy of Weekly World News –
The LAMESTREAM media never reported on how termites ate the Eiffel Tower.
I loved it. The articles about Bat Boy leading people on a high speed chase, interviews with a still alive Elvis, the so-right-wing-it’s-downright-fascist columns of Ed Anger. Made me laugh out loud in the breakroom. Whenever a coworker saw me reading it for the first time they’d just scoff and say “Are you retarded?” (it was the ’90s. People said the “R” word back then.) “You know none of that is true, right?”
Of course I knew it wasn’t true. It was a humor publication. They didn’t come out and say it was bullshit because that’s part of the joke. Stephen Colbert doesn’t begin each show by saying “I’m actually pretty liberal”. That’s how satire works. Granted, Weekly World News was a little ham-handed in their approach so most people didn’t get it.
That’s going to happen whenever you attempt satire, though. Whether you do it well or not, there’s always going to be some people that don’t get the joke. There’s a whole website dedicated to facebook posts of people who think Onion articles are real.
The reason I bring this up is that yesterday I found out about a facebook group for Heteroxexual Awareness Month –
We’re here! We’re straight! Oh… you’re already used to it? Okay.
This group has declared July “Hetero Awareness Month” and has been posting about hetero pride. Everybody’s pissed off about it. Each recent post is littered with comments of people fiercely debating gay rights. There’s a tumbler dedicated to posting screencaps of the group and commenting on how stupid they are, a buzzfeed article with the 20 most ridiculous posts on the group, forums and blog posts decrying the group’s obvious homophobia.
Seriously? This page is an obvious parody. They couldn’t be trying any harder to make it known that it’s an obvious parody. Look at this –
Do you really think they believe that celebrities are coming out of the closet in an effort to silence them? Really?
Come on. The very idea of homophobes trying to start a straight pride is pretty ridiculous, much less one that posts pictures like this –
Nobody wonders why there’s no hetero milk. This is a joke. They’re trying to make a joke.
Or this –
Every house needs closets. Otherwise there’d be clothes everywhere and you wouldn’t be able to hide Christmas presents.
I get why people are upset. There are homophobes out there that try to portray themselves as the victim. I’ve seen the whole “You claim to be tolerant but you’re intolerant of my belief that marriage should be between a man and a woman!” argument plenty of times before (which doesn’t make sense. To have “tolerance” you need an absence of “intolerance”. Being against gay marriage is “intolerant” so it’s literally impossible to be tolerant of that). This page, however, really ramps that view up to the degree where they think that there’s an actual threat on heterosexuals and they need to help people say it’s okay to be straight. It’s ridiculous –
Of course heterosexuals are everywhere. Nobody’s ever said otherwise.
Getting people to think heterosexuality is normal at a young age is all part of the straight agenda.
Parody, satire, troll, call it what you will. Whoever started this group obviously doesn’t actually believe this stuff and is trying to get some laughs. That has to be it. The only other explanation is that they’re incredibly stupid and hateful.