Earlier this week, The Daily Beast reported that longtime Onion fan Elon Musk backed out of buying the website in 2014 and recently poached some of its editors and writers for a mysterious new comedy project, and today, The Onion is responding in true Onion fashion. ClickHole was the first to offer its take on the news with an article published yesterday titled “I Did Everything I Could To Buy ClickHole, But Their Editorial Integrity Won Out Over My Billion-Dollar Offers, And I Respect Them Even More For That (By Elon Musk).â€Â Here’s an excerpt:
None of my desperate, grandiose pitches to change their minds were a match for ClickHole’s principled resistance to temptation. I would put their children through college, and their children’s children. I would give them any amount of my own shares in Tesla or SpaceX that they wanted. I offered to legally waive my right to infringe on any aspect of their editorial process. Yet even the auspice of a billionaire tangentially connected to their noble process of sharing the most attention-grabbing quizzes, blogs, and fail compilations was reason enough for them to rule out my propositions. I stood there, not in anger at ClickHole’s dismissal of my offers, but rather in awe of their unyielding allegiance to promulgating shareable articles in the face of great fortune.
So far, The Onion has published two responses to the Musk news today. First up is “Elon Musk Embarrassed After Realizing He Proposing Idea For Thing That Already Existsâ€:
“The most embarrassing part is that I’ve used it before, too, and I have been for years. That must be where I got the great idea in the first place. There’s even a website for it and everything. I was just so excited that I forgot to double-check that I wasn’t just rehashing something else and proclaiming it was original and visionary. God, people must think I’m just completely out of touch.†At press time, a sheepish Musk told reporters that he was going ahead with his idea anyway, no matter how many people would perceive it as an obvious imitation of the real thing.
Not long after, The Onion posted a subtler response titled “The Onion Hires Several Pastry Chefs Away From Entenmann’s To Form New Bakery,†poking fun at Musk’s super cheeky comment in the Daily Beast report:
The Onion said in a press release this morning in which the news outlet revealed they attempted to buy Entenmann’s three years ago, but ultimately declined out of disinterest in several of the company’s muffin offerings. “It’s fairly obvious that bakery is the next frontier after domination of online news and tailored social media content. Frankly, we don’t know how anyone’s not seeing this.â€
Musk has responded, and well, it sounds like he’s a very conflicted Onion fan today:
Hopefully Musk’s top secret comedy project ends up being extremely funny and not just an Onion rip-off, because now, the pressure is on.