Banksy arrest a hoax by flaky website that also says scores of Texas babies are dying of Ebola

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I’m pretty sure that site is intended as satire.

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I’m pretty sure that whole website is a hoax.

“George Zimmerman Slated To Throw Out World Series First Pitch”

“Obama To Auction Off All Marijuana Seized In Drug Raids Since Taking Office”

“Charlie Sheen’s “Tiger Blood” Might Hold Cure For Ebola, Doctors Say”

“Obama Nominates Dr. Oz for Surgeon General, Vows to ‘Cure’ Ebola”

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Yeah, it’s just the appearance of Ted Cruz and Sarah Palin in the title image that causes Poe’s law to suddenly make it really hard to tell if it’s a satire or just a Tea Party news outlet - i.e. completely wrong about everything. Especially since, even as satire, it’s probably not that different from - and still more accurate than - Fox News…

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It’s much subtler than The Onion. Last time it came up, they almost had me.

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“Much subtler,” or just “not funny”?

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Funny, when I checked earlier today Wikipedia said that national report is a satire news website. Someone just changed it to “hoax” on the principle that satire has an element of humor involved, rather than just being making false statements. It remains to be seen whether that particular edit will survive for long.

But, really, a lot of satire sites these days seem to work on the principle of outraging people to get angry-shares that drive ad traffic. It’s really a sad commentary that Facebook needed to implement a “satire” tag—not so much that Facebook thought its users were dumb, but that its users actually asked Facebook to add the tag so they didn’t keep getting fooled.

At least Empire News manages to be funny about it, with headlines like “Actress Betty White, 92, Dyes Peacefully in her Los Angeles Home”

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Everyone wishes they could be The Onion. Simply ‘making up news’ isn’t exactly clever or funny. Just more disinformation for the masses to get riled up about…

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I have a question, and maybe there’s a simple answer, but if there isn’t… How do we know Banksy is male? (Everyone seems to use the “he” pronoun.)

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I got that impression from watching “Exit Through the Giftshop,” but I suppose it could have been a gender disguise.

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also, i am pretty sure he’s much older than that, anyway.

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Everyone knows Banksy is just the name adopted by a secret cabal of international street artists.

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Snopes.com seems to be 75% dedicated to National Report articles these days. I really dislike that place… unlike the Onion, many of their articles are little more than entirely believable things with no factual basis, lacking any of the social commentary or humor that would be expected with a satire website. So hoax, or disinformation news, is a more accurate description for them. Once upon a time they even had a disclaimer page, noting that their articles are works of fiction, but that has since been removed (or very hidden!)

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Sigh, I have to make sure I look into BB stories too often, because I end up spreading the info and getting egg on my face because I assume the BB info is correct.

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I know a couple of folks in the art world purport to have met him back in the day, but then, such stories, well…

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ITS SO SAD TO HERE ABOUT THOSE BABIES YET NON OF YOU EVEN CARES 

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It is not a hoax site, it is not a satire site, it fox news!

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It’s good that you’re coming straight out with the truth on this one, but given that BoingBoing repeated (and later retracted) a different hoax as true earlier this month, a little less snark towards hoax victims might be called for.

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“Banksy”'s cover for one of his mates from Blur’s album cover art was influenced by my work The Empty Deep in Scenes From The Inside which he was reading when he lived in Bristol in the 90’s,

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I can’t figure out why I should care about what you wrote…