humour // no. 22 theotherpress.ca Satire has been rendered meaningless by reality > The concept of satire no longer applies given the current state of our world Rebecca Peterson Interim Humour Editor ver the weekend the New York Times reported, officially, that the concept of satire has lost all relevance due to current events. “Every time we write a piece old Donald Trump in a serious campaign for the White House, police officers bragging about hunting and shooting black people in the streets, violent white male sex offenders being released from jail early because of the potentially negative impact life behind bars might have on them, and many other obscure room, while expressing calm acceptance of the fatal situation he finds himself in. This comic in many ways satirized the complacency of others in horrible situations. However, the artist himself felt that the satire of the piece was beginning to get lost due to real life complacency in the face of current events, and oi Unintentionally inappropriate vintage ads You don’t have to be Jewish of satire these days, something happens that makes it look like news,” columnist Tom B. Badil said in a phone interview on Monday, sounding very tired. “And every time we write a news article, it winds up looking like satire. | actually had to write an article explaining how months after his tragic shooting, the internet is now honouring a dead gorilla with the hashtag ‘dicks out for Harambe’ I had to write that with my own two hands. I have a Masters from Yale. What am | even doing with my life, Linda?” (No one named Linda was on the phone with him at the time.) With ex-reality TV star and rancid-carrot-with-the- vocabulary-of-an-eight-year- and horrible realities we now face, everyone has started to agree that the world has taken a turn for the horrifically bizarre. “It doesn’t even matter that I'm a strawman figure written to demonstrate the lack of critical thinking employed by Trump supporters in the States,” said young voter John White, star of another article in this section. “There are probably real-life people who have said exactly what I’m saying. They’re probably even named John. It’s a pretty common name.” Well-known artist K.C. Green recently updated a comic he originally drew three years ago, where a dog sits in a burning rewrote the comic to show the dog panicking about the disaster unfolding around him. Though this little anecdote appears in a satire article in the Humour section of this newspaper, it is areal thing that has actually happened. A humour artist had to change his well-known comic satirizing human complacency because it had become too literal. “It’s just not funny anymore,” said staff writer Rebecca Peterson, to no one in particular, as she stared at the articles spread out across her laptop and the 15 tabs of bad news open in her Google Chrome browser. “I mean, it is, I guess, but... God, at what cost?” to love Levy’s tat Fawiiale Bye Hl Apple shocks industry analysts by introducing 1Phone 7 that doesn't suck > Most advertisements of the phone were just a big joke, CEO says Jake Wray Senior Columnist ournalists, software developers, and tech analysts gathered on the morning of September 7 at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco for what they thought would be the standard Apple Inc. fall press event announcing the latest iPhone. Instead, they witnessed a profound speech that plotted an entirely new course for Apple. “It’s time to cut the bullshit,” said Jim Took, Apple’s CEO, as he took the stage. “Apple has become obsessed with the pursuit of revenue, to the detriment of our products. We continue to charge premium prices for the iPhone, but we focus our development on crummy gimmicks like Apple Pay and Siri” “If ’'m being totally honest, I was blind to our mistakes until one weekend last October, when I took a liberal dose of mushrooms out in the desert. It was wild, man. I was able to reflect upon myself, and the company run, froma totally new perspective. | realized that we had heads up our asses in Cupertino. We were totally blind to the experiences of everyday iPhone users.” “All the rumours you've heard over the past year about the iPhone 7 have been completely false. There won't be a big ugly dual-camera, and we were just kidding around with all that nonsense about removing the headphone jack. We have been deliberately spreading misinformation to conceal our true goal: to realize the potential of mobile computing by designing the best possible iPhone. In other words, we stopped letting the marketing team drive our development, and handed the reins back to the engineers,” he said. x 3 Lv = o —! w ae > ss “Tm proud to introduce the fastest, the most customizable, and the most ethical iPhone yet. The iPhone 7.” Typically, when Took finally announces the new phone at these annual events, the audience goes wild with cheers and applause. This year, the auditorium was silent. Hands were clasped over mouths, and asses were on seat edges as Took, along with other Apple executives like Senior VP Geddy Q and Chief Design Officer Tony Stive, unveiled an iPhone that violates many of Apple’s core ideologies. Physically the iPhone 7 resembles the iPhone 6S, with a similar chassis and 4.7- inch screen (though Apple has ditched the “Plus” model this year). Under the hood, the iPhone 7 is significantly more powerful than the iPhone 6S, featuring a lightning- fast, six-core Alo processor, 8GB of RAM, and 512GB of solid-state storage. For the first time ever, Apple has included a micro- SD slot so users can easily expand storage. At one point in the presentation, Stive drew gasps by openly admitting that Apple used to practice planned obsolescence. “But no more,” he said, promising that the iPhone 7 is “built to last, so your battery wont crap out after, like, a year-and-a-half” Also announced were significant changes to the iPhone’s operating system. iOS will now be open-source, allowing “Don't worry, there's plenty of other racial stereotypes to choose from! ” anyone to customize the software (a luxury previously available, in a limited form, only to those who could jailbreak their iPhone}. iPhones will no longer be locked into running iOS, either. The iPhone 7 allows for installation of any compatible operating system, such as Google’s Android OS or Microsoft’s Windows 10. In the pandemonium that ensued after the presentation ended, the Other Press talked with several tech analysts among the crowd. Many were skeptical of the radical changes undertaken by Apple. “This has to be some kind of bizarre prank,” said Tony Callaghan, a Portland-based tech blogger. “Apple would never, ever, in a million years, release the source code for iOS. | literally cannot believe what I just heard in there.” Some analysts, like Toronto- based freelance journalist Suleman Greeg, were more optimistic. “Get the camera up close to my eye so they can see my tears,” he said. “I’m weeping because what Jim Took and Apple have done here is revolutionary. They have thrown consumerism and greed right out the window. This is the start of a new era, in the computing world and in the business world. This is fundamentally a good thing.”