Tear Jerker / The Onion

And then there was the time they ran it twice in a row.

For a satirical site, The Onion posts a lot of depressing articles.

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• "Daddy Put In Bye-Bye Box". Don't click that. Really.
• Pretty much every article that was written in the aftermath of 9/11 counts, but some of the best examples would be:
  • "God Angrily Clarifies 'Don't Kill' Rule", in particular the closing paragraph:
  "Upon completing His outburst, God fell silent, standing quietly at the podium for several moments. Then, witnesses reported, God's shoulders began to shake, and He wept."
  • "Not Knowing What Else To Do, Woman Bakes American-Flag Cake," also written in response to 9/11. It reflects the reactions of a lot of people that day very accurately.
  "I baked a cake," said Pearson, shrugging her shoulders and forcing a smile as she unveiled the dessert in the Overstreet household later that evening. "I made it into a flag."
  Pearson and the Overstreets stared at the cake in silence for nearly a minute, until Cassie hugged Pearson.
  "It's beautiful," Cassie said. "The cake is beautiful."
• Combined with You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: "New Mommy A Lot Prettier"
• "Elderly Woman Begins Freezing Meals Her Husband Can Eat While She's Passed Away".
• For animal lovers: Last of 2008 Christmas Puppies Euthanized, Marking Start of Spring
  • And if you've ever encountered Released to Elsewhere...
• US Commemorates 9/11 By Toasting Stable Afghan Government. If only that was real...
  • Kelly's cartoon that day was surprisingly poignant too. He usually employs some measure of You Can Panic Now, but this one was just his Author Avatar with a Single Tear asking "When is it okay to laugh again"?
• "Blissful Ignorance Commemorated on Annual 9/10 Anniversary." Holy shit.
• "Study Finds Hearing Loved One's Voice Induces Excruciating Pain In Coma Patients."

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• "Son, It's Time We Have A Talk About Where Babies Go."
• "Best Part Of Gay 12-Year-Old’s Day Half Hour Spent Eating Lunch Alone On Staircase."
  • Even sadder when you watch the video accompanying the article, which ends on the kid sitting alone humming a little tune as he eats his lunch.
• "NRA Sets 1,000 Killed In School Shooting As Amount It Would Take For Them To Reconsider Much Of Anything."
  • This one hurts even more after the Sandy Hook school shooting in Connecticut.
  • And even even more in the wake of the Parkland, Florida high school shooting in 2018.
• "'You Will Die Someday And It Will Be Sad,' All Man Thinking During Dinner With Parents"
• "18-Year-Old Fighting In Afghanistan Has 9/11 Explained To Him By Older Soldier"
• "Fuck Everything, Nation Reports" A response to the December 2012 Connecticut school shooting. A rare occasion when Cluster F-Bomb can be used emotionally. You can tell that whoever wrote it, wasn't in a funny mood.
• "All Of Area Man's Hard Work Finally Pays Off For Employer". Hoo boy...

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• "Ask An Auctioneer Revealing He Was Molested as a Child."
• "Afghanistan War Veteran Solemnly Recalls Seeing Entire Platoon Murdered By Undiagnosed Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder." It takes a minute to hit you.
• "Holy Shit, I Just Realized People Want To Kill My Dad." Written from the perspective of Sasha Obama, who has, more likely than not, realized this already.
• "This What World Like Now", written after the bombings in Boston.
  • Followed up by "Jesus, This Week".
• "‘I Don’t Know Who I Am Anymore, Little Buddy!’ Says Mother In Midst Of Nervous Breakdown"
• "Child Who Just Lost Balloon Begins Lifelong Battle With Depression"
  "No, the balloon," said Tremont, who as an adult will work with his physician and several psychiatrists to find a suitable combination of anxiolytic and psychotropic medicines to quell the disease’s debilitating symptoms, ultimately turning into an over-medicated and unresponsive husk. "It's flying away."
  "Come back," added the toddler who will never feel entirely happy or normal again.
• "Children Of All Ages Delighted By Enslavement Of Topsy The Elephant"
• "Awkward New International Student Saw His Entire Family Murdered In The Congo" straddles a line between this and just plain horrifying.
• "If You Think You Can Talk To Your Mother Like That, Then You’ve Paid Attention To The Way I’ve Subtly Degraded Her For Years"
• "Bullied Eighth-Grader Incorrectly Thought Classmates Would Leave Him Alone During Field Trip To 9/11 Memorial" The ending, however, is a Moment of Awesome.
• "Ugly Girl Killed"
• Also from the post 9-11 issues: "Arab-American Third Grader Returns from Recess Crying, Saying He Didn't Kill Anyone."
• "As Much As I Hated Putting My Dog to Sleep..."
• In the wake of Nelson Mandela's death. "Nelson Mandela Becomes First Politician To Be Missed"
• "Generous Military Sends $800 In Disability To Man Who Wakes Up Screaming Every Night."
• "Kid With Rough Home Life Gives Mickey Extra Long Hug"
• The front page of The Onion's final print issue.
• 97 Year Old Dies Unaware Of Being Violin Prodigy. The idea of being so uncommonly gifted and never finding out is incredibly depressing.
• Area Man Growing A Little Tired of Rushing Home to Hug Loved Ones
  At press time, Sifton was telling his children something like this would never happen again, a practice he has mastered over the past six months.
• Every Family Member's Birthday Now Marred by Some Tragedy
• Flag In Front Of Post Office Can Hardly Remember A Time It Wasn't Flying Half-Staff
• 12 Year-old's Christmas List Demonstrates Heartbreaking Awareness Of Family’s Financial Predicament. This is sad for people who've gone through tough times before, and parents who who've felt guilty they couldn't provide somethings for their kids.
• Kidnapped Boy Found Safe, Imagines Kidnapped Boy. Honestly, this one's not even funny. It's just sad.
• Total Weirdo Spends Mother's Day At Cemetery
• Kids Love When Mom Sad Enough To Just Order Pizza For ANYONE with severe clinical depression, this one is already heartbreaking. But for anyone who also has a mother suffering from the same disorder and has actually witnessed this, it becomes almost unreadable. There is absolutely NOTHING funny about this one.
• Black Man Bids Tearful Goodbye To Family Before Daily Commute
• Bully Can't Believe Classmate Took 4 Straight Years of Being Told to Kill Herself to Heart
• Hummingbird Back at Feeder Again, Grandmother Reports
• Suicide letter full of Simpsons references
• The Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice review where the reviewer compares watching two iconic heroes fighting to watching his parents marriage collapse.
• Childbirth To Be Area Woman's Least Painful Interaction With Daughter
• Middle Eastern Man Not Sure How Many Days’ Worth Of Airport Detention Clothes To Pack, published in light of the Trump administration's anti-immigration executive orders.
• Nation Begs Disaffected Youth Gravitating Toward Neo-Nazism To Get High And Play Xbox Instead. It's still a funny article, though it just breams with desperation of loved ones not wanting youth to turn to evil to just do anything else, even things they would normally look down at you on, that your eyes just start stinging.
• ‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens This article was first published after the tragedy that happened at Isla Vista, California. More than 10 articles with the same title have been published throughout the past several years. The reprinted article changes the photo, the details of the location and other details but the article remains the same. The most recent edition was printed after the shooting in Dayton, Ohio in August 2019. The repeating story shows how very little has changed since the last attack and that nothing has been done to solve the issue. This is a case of a Running Gag that many people want to end.
  • After the Valentine's Day shooting in Parkland, Florida, (which was covered in one of the repeated articles) the original author of the infamous headline revealed the school was a mile away from his house.
  • After the shooting in El Paso in the beginning of August 2019, another shooting occurred at Dayton, Ohio less than 24 hours after the previous one. To emphasize the point of the frequency of such shootings, the article was reprinted twice within minutes of each other with the details of the separate events.
  • And to hammer the point home even more, a follow-up article based on an out-of-context quotation favored by militant gun owners and self-proclaimed 'patriots': Thomas Jefferson: 'The Tree Of Liberty Must Be Refreshed From Time To Time With The Blood Of Patriots And Tyrants And Kindergarteners And Newlyweds And High-Schoolers And Parents And Teachers And Worshippers And Workers And Occasionally Infants'
• Elderly Dog Can Already Tell Owner Doesn't Think She's Worth $3000 Gallstone Surgery.
• The Onion review of Finding Dory, which turns into a poignant commentary on society's failure to care for the disabled.
• Newborn Loses Faith In Humanity After Record 6 Days
• The fact that for some, The Onion has lost its satirical edge because Trump-era America is so ludicrous that it became nigh-impossible to parody. "The Onion's just reporting the news again" or variants of which have become popular responses to articles like this one, about mainstream media apparently humanizing the 2018 Austin Bomber and ignoring the fact that he was a white nationalist who killed 2 black people. Compare the "satire" with this Associated Press article. It becomes more obvious that something is changing in not just the Onion, but politics and media itself.
  • "Report: Make It Stop" is "No Way"'s more recent, more random cousin, consisting solely of four images alluding to recent "insane" events followed by the closest thing so far to the Onion just giving up. By 2019, many felt the same way.
  At press time, sources confirmed that they knew deep down it was never going to stop.
• “Black Father Gives Son “The Talk” about Holding Literally Any Object”. Written in response to police killings like Stephon Clark, who was gunned down because he was holding a cell phone that was mistaken for a gun.
  • On a related note: "Woman Nervously Reaches For Cell Phone As Suspicious Black Man Tells Her Today’s Soup Is Minestrone". The article ends with the cops "[pulling] their firearms and [slamming] the suspect onto a table after he produced a threatening packet of oyster crackers."
• "Man Surprised By How Often He Still Uses Bullying Skills He Learned In High School". An unusual case in that you feel sorry not for the Villain Protagonist, but for the people he mistreats without regret.
• "Area Man Fantasized About For One And Only Time in His Life".. If you're someone whose found themselves dealing with feelings of loneliness, this one is very close to home.
  • And on the SAME DAY as the above... "Fema Airdrops Emergency Cyanide Pills For Residents Stranded By Hurricane Florence".. Good. God. After this one, it's like The Onion ITSELF can't even be funny anymore.
• "Loved Ones Recall Local Man's Cowardly Battle With Cancer". Russ Kunkel may not be a good person, but he doesn't necessarily deserve the hand he's been dealt, and it goes to show that not every terminally ill person can Face Death with Dignity.
• "Memorial Honors Victims Of Imminent Dam Disaster"
• This edition of In the Know has the topic of debate "Should unemployed people be buying Apple computers?" Despite the other commentators repeatedly pulling the subject away from that and towards other related topics, Lauralee Hickok keeps trying to make the valid point of why the unemployed would even need to keep buying new Apple products if their old computers still work fine, citing it as being part of the overspending that led to the Great Recession. Despite her argument making sense, the other commentators stop her and tell her she's contributing nothing of value, before the moderator asks her to leave. Lauralee just sits in Stunned Silence for a few seconds before quietly muttering "OK", sounding as though she's on the verge of tears.
• "Man Dies After Long And Painful Battle With Life" is a depressing story of a painful and unfulfilling life.
• Freedom-wielding High Schooler Freedoms Down 16 Classmates in Latest Mass Freedoming. Ouch.
• 45-Year-Old Loser Moves In With Parents. It's so to the point that it doesn't even need an article.
• "Report: This To Be History’s Last-Ever Reference To 19th-Century Seamstress Florence Shadewell"
• "Firefighter Died To Save Unimpressive Teen": It's hard to watch the anchors telling the teen that You Should Have Died Instead, when she simply wants to get on with her life and live a good life, painfully aware that she can't live up to the example set by the man who died to save her.