In November of 2018 I added a seemingly random note about a ‘more Jain-friendly The Onion’ after finishing a shift at my part time job, and on the way to my university. The part time job in question was amazing, but included it’s fair share of mundane tasks — which was exceptionally great for ideas such as starting a pseudo-newspaper that posted satirical news stories, not dissimilar to what websites such as The Onion do.
This wasn’t the first time I was interested in making up fictionalised news for the purposes of comedy. In the November of 2016, my best-friend Ritviq and I started a fictionalised satirical podcast , The Black Hole, which was essentially a visual news show from the future available strictly in audio format.
It was based in the year 2116, and covered news stories from the week followed by panel discussions over the week’s top stories, some of them revolving around “Iphonetisation”, “LGBTQ+ community starting their own religion since the only way they could get same-sex marriages to be legal in India is if you marketed it as a religious quirk” and “India banning lighters and matchsticks since mounting global pressure made them legalise medical marijuana, but they still did not want people to smoke any of it”.
Looking back, it amazes me to think it all started with a surprisingly elaborate and over-the-top…
