Fake Onion story causes real confusion for California town

[Blue_Tires]

Here we go again.

A fake story published by The Onion is causing some real confusion for a California town and the institute that the humor paper satirized.

The Onion published a brief, one paragraph story on October 26 with the headline, "Study Finds Every Style of Parenting Produces Disturbed, Miserable Adults":

SANTA ROSA, CA—A study released by the California Parenting Institute Tuesday shows that every style of parenting inevitably causes children to grow into profoundly unhappy adults. "Our research suggests that while overprotective parenting ultimately produces adults unprepared to contend with life's difficulties, highly permissive parenting leads to feelings of bitterness and isolation throughout adulthood," lead researcher Daniel Porter said. "And, interestingly, we found that anything between those two extremes is equally damaging, always resulting in an adult who suffers from some debilitating combination of unpreparedness and isolation. Despite great variance in parenting styles across populations, the end product is always the same: a profoundly flawed and joyless human being." The study did find, however, that adults often achieve temporary happiness when they have children of their own to perpetuate the cycle of human misery.

The real institute's executives thought The Onion story was funny--at first. But they were soon deluged with emails and phone calls from concerned residents.

"I'm totally aware that it's satire," Robin Bowen, CPI's executive director, told the Santa Rosa Press Democrat. "But it's spreading through the Internet and people's blogs and where it's coming from is getting left off and it's looking like a news story."

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/cutline/fake-onion-story-causes-real-confusion-california-town-145806545.html;_ylt=AoYz1ufdD9imCNgFYJ13Rf6ZCMZ_;_ylu=X3oDMTFkbGs1M3FnBG1pdANCbG9nIEJvZHkEcG9zAzkEc2VjA01lZGlhQmxvZ0JvZHlBc3NlbWJseQ--;_ylg=X3oDMTM3aDYydjNhBGludGwDdXMEbGFuZwNlbi11cwRwc3RhaWQDOGJhZjA5NDItYjJhZS0zZTZiLTk2ODAtNWZlNmNhYjQ1MWVjBHBzdGNhdANvcmlnaW5hbHN8dGhlbG9va291dARwdANzdG9yeXBhZ2U-;_ylv=3

[ZombieHorde]

1. Recommended, but please consider using the "Preview" option before posting. nt

[FSogol]

2. Will we ever get to the point where we'll have to tell Americans not to look up when it rains, so

they won't drown? It is looking that way...

:shrug:

[dtexdem]

4. Ooh, the basis for another Onion story.

;-)

[SixthSense]

3. One day, perhaps...

... reality won't be so surreal as to be easily confused with obvious satire