I Am Crake posted:

brownies

Forti posted:

My favourite issue

unpacked robinhood posted:

Are you supposed to pay 20£ to read this crap ?

unpacked robinhood posted:

Are you supposed to pay 20£ to read this crap ?

Rambling Robot posted:

Rambling Robot posted:

Rambling Robot posted:

moerketid posted:

My mother reads those trashy magazines e.g. That's Life, because she's also a moron. They are a goldmine of . At one point I was visiting and copied down the names of the stories from the front page and posted it online, I went to the liberty of digging it out.

My breast exploded IN THE SUPERMARKET

LAST SUPPER Murdered after her OMLETTE

My soldier lover was a sick pedo

My VAGINA fell apart!

SPIKED ON A BOOZY NIGHT OUT BY A METAL POLE!

I'M 50st...and my man pays to FEED me

My lips are made from my VAGINA

Capitalization directly from the story titles, not mine.

Sludge Tank posted:

http://www.worldwideinterweb.com/item/2560-the-most-ridiculous-tabloid-headlines-of-all-time-25-photos.html

Paladinus posted:

This guy is set to win local elections in Belarus.
He's also currently unemployed and has criminal record.

moerketid posted:

Those are from the Weekly World News though, as opposed to a weekly magazine that a good number of British women actually believe and take seriously.

Sludge Tank posted:

What's not to take seriously about this

joedevola posted:

It's not just weirdos who read those magazines though. You'll find them in every staff lunch room and middle aged lady's handbag.

They are truly grotesque.

Bro Nerd Alpha posted:

He goes by the nickname "Dragonborn"

Weldon Pemberton posted:

What's wrong with cakes, small fairy-like creatures, or younger girl guides?

In seriousness, that guy's behaviour is by no means unique to bronies. Crazy obsessive fans have been believing they're married to cartoons in this manner since at least the dawn of the internet, and probably in other form long before that. They're usually either intensely lonely or incapable of understanding the value of real life relationships, so they turn to idealized characters.

Inspector Zenigata posted:

We all lost something the day Weekly World News stopped publishing in print.

quote:

In 1999, somebody taped that WWN story to a wall in the Senate press gallery, where it amused the press corps, although some scribes griped that the paper had underestimated the number of aliens in the Senate by at least three or four. Reporters loved the Weekly World News. Many fantasized about working for it and casting aside the tired old conventions of journalism, such as printing facts.

"Mainstream journalists read WWN and dreamed about killing the county sewer-system story they were working on and writing about a swamp monster or a 65-pound grasshopper," says Derek Clontz, who was a Weekly World News editor for 15 years.

In fact, most of WWN's writers really had escaped from mainstream newspapers, including the Philadelphia Inquirer and the New York Times. They figured life at the Weekly World News would be more fun -- and they were right.

"It was electrifying," says Sal Ivone, who worked at the New York Daily News before jumping to WWN. "Every day you'd go into the office and somebody would make you scream with laughter."

"It was just a hoot," says Joe Berger, who covered Congress for the Oregon Journal before escaping to WWN in 1981.

"We were the Beatles of fake journalism," says Clontz.
...
Eddie Clontz kept telling writers: You've got to give people a reason to believe. To do that, Berger says, they would write their weirdest stories in a very straight, just-the-facts-ma'am style. And they'd quote experts explaining how this strange event could occur. Sometimes the experts actually existed.

"I remember a story about a guy who went on a diet, and he got so hungry that he chased a dwarf down the street with a hatchet because he mistook the dwarf for a chicken," Berger recalls. "I'm pretty sure I wrote that story."

He's also pretty sure it was totally fictitious. But it had to seem true.

"We would explain to people how it was possible that a guy could get so hungry that he'd mistake a dwarf for a chicken," Berger says. "We'd interview a psychiatrist about it and quote him. And if we couldn't find one, we'd 'find' one."
...
They worked in an office in the back of the National Enquirer newsroom, behind a partition installed because Eddie Clontz's yelling disturbed the serious journalists at the Enquirer. Actually, everybody yelled. First, somebody would yell out an idea for a headline, then everybody else would yell out better ideas. The yelling was exceeded only by the laughing.

"There were days when I would leave work," Lind says, "with my stomach and my face hurting from laughing all day at the ideas being kicked around."
...
t sure was fun while it lasted. But then something happened.

"It turned to [bleep]," says Lind. "The guy who took over didn't understand what it was."

The guy who took over bears the delightfully Dickensian name of David Pecker. In 1999, Pecker bought American Media, which owned the National Enquirer, the Star and the Weekly World News. Changes were made and soon a lot of WWN's old-timers were gone -- Eddie Clontz, Ivone, Berger, Lind, Kulpa -- replaced by young comedy writers.

"He wanted to hire comedy writers," Ivone says. "But it's not just comedy. It's a different skill set."

Gradually, WWN changed. Bat Boy became a comic strip, one of several strips in the new WWN, none of them very comic. The new editors also added lame advice columns by "Lester the Typing Horse" and "Sammy the Chatting Chimp." Ed Anger remained and he was still "pig-biting mad" but he wasn't so funny anymore. Circulation plummeted.

"It was like seeing someone you love wither up and die," says Berger.

The old-timers say Pecker ruined the Weekly World News. What does Pecker say?

Nothing. He's not talking. Neither is anybody else at WWN. On July 24, the company issued a brief statement announcing that WWN was folding "due to the challenges in the retail and wholesale magazine marketplace."

Iron Crowned posted:

I used to just randomly pick up a copy whenever I was grocery shopping.

I was just jonsing for some WWN because of those pics, now I'm sad.

Bad Sneakers posted:

You're in luck, friend. Google Books has every issue since 1980 archived.

http://books.google.com/books/serial/ISSN:0199574X?rview=1&lr=&sa=N&start=0

protip: only read 1995 and back

Rambling Robot posted:

Forti posted:

My favourite issue

Tin Tim posted:

Wtf is this real or a joke? Because if not then

Especially the part about Rape Santa...

Tin Tim posted:

Wtf is this real or a joke? Because if not then

Especially the part about Rape Santa...

vaguely posted:

On the subject of UK women's magazines being hilariously goddamn crazy, here's a website that collected a bunch of covers for you to laugh at. I'm convinced a good portion of the audience knows they're bullshit but finds them fun anyway, people can't be that gullible
They also tend to contain their fair share of AUG in their own right, horrible medical stories are a staple ingredient

vaguely posted:

Yes, that is a real magazine. Once again, here is a selection of what you might find in the women's interest section of a standard UK newsagent. Whether or not the stories themselves are true, I'll leave up to your judgement.

Tin Tim posted:

Thanks, now I have something to laugh about later. Oh, and I didn't expect the stories to be true because come the gently caress on, but it baffles me that somebody actually sat down to write this for a magazine that you can buy in a store.

"Our Christmas issue is still a bit light, any ideas?"

"Rape Santa?"

"Excellent."

vaguely posted:

Have another sample.

Unfortunately the uploader did not include the full YUCKY PIC INSIDE so you'll have to imagine what horrors lie on that man's face.

Inspector Zenigata posted:

click for huge