The Onion names Kim Jong-Un sexiest man for 2012, Chinese believe it

[skeemer]

http://thechive.com/2012/11/27/the-o...s-it-3-photos/

I lol'd.

edit: more SFW version: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012...na-kim-jong-un

[bmorepunk]

I would totally go Gangnam Style on Kim Jong-Un.

[dialtone]

http://thechive.com/2012/11/27/the-o...s-it-3-photos/

I lol'd.

edit: more SFW version: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012...na-kim-jong-un

Lmmfao

[Baltimatt]

The English-language People's Daily story is still up.

[dogstarman]

Un-freaking-believable!

The staff at the Onion are probably high-fiving each other so much that their hands are bruised.

How far outside of reality does one need to be to take such a story as real? How can the people's daily have such a lack of any sense of satire?

[skeemer]

Un-freaking-believable!

The staff at the Onion are probably high-fiving each other so much that their hands are bruised.

How far outside of reality does one need to be to take such a story as real? How can the people's daily have such a lack of any sense of satire?

Couple thoughts:

1. The People's Daily, which is effectively an arm of the Chinese government, pushed this story knowing it was satire but also knowing that many, if not most of the Chinese population would be unaware of (and likely not have access to find out) the Onion is satire.

2. The paper realized its mistake but did not want to admit to such a hilarious error and thus kept the story up as real.

[Baltimatt]

Oops, People's Daily took it down:

您要查看的页面不存在，5秒后将自动跳转至人民网首页

Which Google translates as such:

You want to view the page does not exist, five seconds will automatically jump to the People's Network Home

[dogstarman]

The Chinese [people] do NOT believe that stuff. This is a major screw-up by the newspaper who must have editors that are absurdly dogmatic.

The Chinese folks I've worked with (admittedly an infinitesimal sample size), have a very finely tuned sense of humor complete with wit and irony. They have also have a huge tolerance for stupidity and red-tape from their government. In this sense, they're a lot like Russian folks, they think for themselves and have strong opinions but are loathe to non-anonymously blast them all over the public sphere (the internet).

[Scaggsville]

It's sweet that the big, dumb CHI-COMS are so gullible...

[kandace]

This is not the first time this has happened. The Beijing Evening News reported a previous Onion story as real news a decade ago:

On June 3, 2002, the Beijing Evening News scooped its competitors with a shocking story from America: the U.S. Congress was threatening to leave Washington DC if the city didn’t construct a new Capitol building that included a retractable dome. Congress was apparently even considering a move to a town such as Memphis or Charlotte if the DC city government did not buckle under to its demands. The article quoted House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) as saying, “Don’t get us wrong. We actually love the dilapidated [old] building. But the cruel reality is, it’s no longer suitable for use by a world-class legislature. Its contours are ugly, there’s no room to maneuver, there aren’t enough bathrooms, and let’s not even talk about the parking.”

Humor and satire are highly culture specific. Foreign cultures do not immediately have the ability to distinguish humor and/or satire from serious statements that cultural natives have.

[zenwalk]

I would totally go Gangnam Style on Kim Jong-Un.

I'm still baffled how that broke all records for internet hits.