The Onion warns 'ungrateful prick' readers to 'Click The Fucking Link' in ad plea
The Onion has launched an honest and amusing tirade about its funding model, telling readers to stop just reading the headlines.
The Onion issues frank warning
An article entitled ‘We Don’t Make Any Money If You Don’t Click The Fucking Link’ goes into detail about how readers need to visit the homepage to monetise the content.
While this issue is not quite isolated to parody and humour sites, many have noted that readers tend to guffaw at headlines before going about their daily business – completely avoiding the content and the ads that fund the operation. As such, the Univision owned website has set out to tell its readers to actually read the site, and when possible, gaze deeply into the ads.
The Onion article read (although you should probably click on the link): “If you enjoy any of this content, any of it at all, it is highly recommended that you take one measly second out of your life to actually navigate to any of our many, many articles that grace your social media feed for free. Or, hell, you could even look at our homepage once in a while. Because unless you actually visit the website, there eventually won’t be one, you ungrateful pricks.”
It added that viewers probably spotted the provocative headline on Facebook or Twitter but didn’t even bother reading the piece.