Show HN: Like The Onion, But Real

[networked]

I'm not sure the I'd go with the name "The On1on". It seems too close to trademark infringement. An alternative off the top of my head is "The Un-ion" (as in "un-" + "Onion") but it's hard to distinguish from "union" (as in "trade union"). "The Garlic", anyone?

Edit: I'd better let you judge what sounds nice.

Edit 2: Hmm. Let's try my Rebrand-O-Matic:

On1on — On-1-on — 1-on-1 — Ioni — iOni.

You can illustrate it with a sleek iPhone-like icon of an oni (a Japanese demon) holding an onion.

http://ioni.io is available for $50, which may or may not be too much for this project.

More seriously, though, http://allium.org is available for $10.69 from NameCheap. "Allium" is the Latin name of the genus to which onion and garlic belong.

[prawn]

Just go with The Garlic if available. Needs to be more obviously than Allium, and should be a .com to mimic The Onion.

[slifty]

As a quick backstory: This is a mashup between /r/nottheonion, google image search, and The Onion's CSS. Pretty crazy what a little styling can do to the way your brain interprets information!

[sp332]

Um, are you seriously hotlinking to resources hosted by theonion.com? That is a terrible, terrible idea.

  <link rel="stylesheet" href="http://www.theonion.com/static/CACHE/css/2903347c3113.css" type="text/css" media="all">

[chewxy]

I was going to suggest /r/nottheonion but it seems OP is already using it. Not bad though, I kinda like it.

EDIT: oops, you're OP. Ever thought of suggesting this CSS to reddit?

[rcfox]

Remember that copyright applies to CSS too.

[jere]

When brainstorming website ideas lately, I find myself often thinking "well shit, that could just as well be a subreddit." Probably not a very productive attitude.

[benatkin]

Your site is bad and you should feel bad. ;)

[rckrd]

Why do the links take me to the actual onion site? Let's say I visit your site. Then I am viewing real news that looks fake (i.e. just poor and sensationalist journalism). But once I click an article at the top, I'm taken to the real onion site - with fake news that looks real. With the sites looking the same, I might not notice I've changed to the real onion...

Very confusing.

Also, as said before, hotlinking to another site's resources is not a good idea. At all.

Execution aside, I don't like the idea. The Onion provides well written fake news. The content that you're linking to is a poor excuse for news; its the low-hanging fruit of the internet. I couldn't see myself browsing this stuff. In fact, the reason I browse HN is to not have to deal with content like this.

[snoonan]

I'm not ok with this. Watch the trademark. I'm not even talking about litigation -- just not ok with people willing to trade on another company's name.

[UnFleshedOne]

Doesn't this count as parody and thus fair use? Or does parody of parody completes the circle and the site is not a parody anymore?

[mikk0j]

This is such troll-fodder. I'm not even a militant atheist, and still just looking at the front page pisses me off. That and the design, which jars my brain and hurts my eyes.

[huhsamovar]

It's not a high school essay. Calm yo teat.

[a_p]

The Video, Politics, Sports, Business and Entertainment links point to theonion.com. I suggest that you change this. An Onion dev already posted that he had considered screwing with your site when it was using the Onion's CSS. If they did want to screw with your site (or its visitors) it would be easy for them to redirect anyone that clicked one of those links (giving them a referer from your site) to someplace unexpected.

[slifty]

But... that would be amazing...

[mmahemoff]

A visual nottheonion is a great idea. I suggest changing the name to something that's not going to violate their trademark.

Also, a quick way to avoid hot-linking the images is to use a service like Cloudinary, it will proxy them for you with little code change.

There's also http://www.ruddl.com/ as a Pinterest-Reddit mashup, but they only have a few subreddits.

[slifty]

Thanks for the feedback, and great tip on the images!

[jaredsohn]

You should fix the top links (Video, Politics, Sports, Business, Science, Tech, Entertainment, and Breaking) so that they don't take you to the real Onion.

[slifty]

Taking suggestions on places to link to! We've swapped out a few of them, but were waiting for inspiration to strike for the others.

[stevenleeg]

You may want to rid of those sharing links:

http://i.imgur.com/3EYKseY.jpg

Generally those are more harm than they're worth, as nobody uses them and they annoy the user (especially since they're in the way of what I'm actually trying to read).

[slifty]

Noted, and removed in the next push.

[jaysonelliot]

This seems childish and a little bit reactionary. Oh, I see, the content is chosen by Reddit. That makes sense.

[prawn]

How is it childish and reactionary? They're headlines you can imagine seeing on The Onion, but are legit; it's harmless and a touch amusing. It's just riffing off The Onion's style of presenting content.

I post on HN but don't have an account on Reddit, but I think pigeon-holing an entire community is more likely to be considered childish and reactionary. This isn't "our site vs your site" and some sort of tribal war. What about this site or its content has irritated you?

(Main parts of Reddit I do read are AskScience and AskHistorians and they are, for the most part, excellent. Anything but juvenile.)

[muppetman]

This comment seems childish and a little bit over-reactionary. Oh, I see, you feel superior to people that post on Reddit. That makes sense.

[lurkinggrue]

That's a bit childish and a little bit reactionary of you.

[mehrzad]

Insulting the Reddit community on HN? We can finally do it without being downvoted? That's somewhat pleasing.

[philsalesses]

So this is this like the onion, only true? Manually curated by you or do you have some magic code to do it?

[slifty]

Yep! real headlines -- curation is done by redditors (why re-invent something that already kicks ass)

[duggieawesome]

The Science/Tech header tab is great.

[hansy]

Hmm I was confused when I saw actual articles from The Onion on there, but that's because the top navigation links point to pages on The Onion.

Aside from that minor confusion, the site's purpose is absolutely hilarious and I applaud the tongue-in-cheek approach.

[greenyoda]

This site reminds me of "News of the Weird":

http://www.newsoftheweird.com/archive/index.html

[throwaway420]

This is a reasonably decent idea.

But copying the name and look and feel of an existing site in so casual a manner seems very lazy and is off-putting.

[slifty]

The point of this project is the blunt comparison to The Onion -- it is using reality to create a parody of a parody of reality. In other words, the copying of the name, look, and feel of a well known and well recognized satirical publication is actually a vital part of the statement about our world and the media.

[cpdean]

Cool. It's like http://www.fark.com/ but with a more attractive layout.

[tlogan]

Excellent! This reminds me of "Daily Rotten News".

[jdolitsky]

haha yes