I think the Onion is as good as it ever was. The issue now is that the real news is so wild and unhinged the Onion doesn't have that segment cornered anymore.
The Onion youtube vids of the late 2000's were phenomenal. It was all downhill from there imo. Take a look at this recent video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2niC4ACCp20. I don't like Taylor Swift but this is just not funny. I don't see what the point of it is is.
The new one is really bad. Feels so fake. And the anchor can't role play. The old one is so much better. If you don't listen, you don't even get that it is a joke.
That is true, but the Onion is also a shell of its former self. The Onion became a household name because of how widely consumed it used to be. It doesn't have anywhere near that reach or cultural influence today.
I think the problem is that American politics has become so polarized, that humor anywhere is more likely to be partisan political and written directly in reaction to that week’s events. The development has been observed for late-night television, and it’s not a new thing with The Onion either: already over a decade ago, friends who had grown up on classic 1990s Onion were bemoaning this shift. Sure, The Onion had used political figures in jokes before (“Congress Debates Rush”, “Clinton Declares Self President For Life”) but those politicians could have stood for anything; there was very little reference to specific policies or controversies.
Oh come on now. The world wasn't just sent to live with it's auntie and uncle in Bel-Air. The distressed sullen worldview might be new to you, but people certainly had it back when I found the Onion regularly quite enjoyable too.
In 2004, George W Bush was re-elected. At that time, a plausible Onion story might have been that George W Bush was going to appoint a vaccine denier HHS and someone who was investigated by the DOJ as AG, and that would have been, like, mildly funny (which was always the Onion's thing, really; it was almost never _great_), because haha, the president popularly considered to be a bit incompetent is appointing obviously unsuitable people, how amusing, but also, well, a bit of fun, not real. (Actually, if anything I think this might have strayed a bit too far into absurdity for the Onion's liking, particularly Gaetz.)
Fast-forward to 2024, and, well... It just doesn't work as well anymore. Like, imagine an Onion story about Trump's appointments. What could it possibly say that would be stranger than the reality?
Maybe appointing Paula Deen as the secretary of health. Show a "food pyramid" that is just multiple pies stacked on top of each other with a side of melted butter to wash it down with, and her vice secretary is a disgraced police officer with over 800 sanctions kitted out in full milspec riot gear whose job it is to beat every child who fails to eat 15 pies a day into submission?
