Upworthy-Like Parody Site’s List Probably Includes More Useful Information Than Most of Upworthy

Last month, The Onion launched
ClickHole.com, parody of websites such as Upworthy that utilize the
“You Won’t Believe…” headline template to best take advantage of
perceived social media consumption habit to hilarious effect. I may
well have learned about it when a commenter here posted
this story that at first glance looked like it was on a simple
Upworthy knock off.

Yesterday, though, ClickHole.com ran a piece, “5
U.S.-Backed Regimes That Failed So Hard They Won,” that applied
the irreverence the website’s displayed toward the Things People
Care About on Social Media to a topic, foreign policy intervention,
that doesn’t get as much play as, say, self-congratulations about
speaking truth to power by rattling off slogans and talking points.
The item on Iraq:  

The war in Iraq was an epic fail for sure, and even though it’s
finished now, the fail just keeps on coming! The government that
the U.S. established to replace Saddam Hussein is trying to break
the world record in fail, ceding power and strategic interests to
extremist militants pretty much on the reg despite a $14 billion
U.S. investment to stabilize the country following the troop
withdrawal. Gotta hand it to us, when we fail, we fail HARD!

Read the
rest here. There’s an error in the last item placing Carter’s
presidency “throughout the 80s.” I’d remind you it’s a parody
website to explain how the error made it into the live version, but
actual news outlets sadly make mistakes about history too.