We lie to you on purpose. Here's the whole trick.
Every headline on this site is invented and impossible. Every article behind a headline is real, sourced and numbered. This page has no jokes in it, no advertisements and no screamers, because the rest of the site only reads as satire if one page is completely straight.
01 — The headline is fake
Always, by design. If you could mistake one for real reporting, we wrote it wrong and we will replace it. Absurdity is the ethical guardrail, not the joke: a headline that could circulate as a screenshot and be believed has failed.
02 — The image is generated
Every feature image on this site is machine-generated and labelled as such in three places: the visible caption, the alt text, and burned into the corner of the picture itself so the disclosure survives being screenshotted out of context. No image depicts a real event.
03 — The article is real
400 to 600 words, sourced, numbered and dated. The word count is printed on every card as a promise that something real is behind the door. Sources are listed at the foot of every article, with links.
04 — We take nothing
No advertising money, no data, no paywall, no analytics and no third-party scripts. Every advertisement is markup we wrote, labelled “advertisement”, and clicking one takes you to a correction. The newsletter form is a prop and stores nothing.
Corrections policy
If we get something wrong in a real article, the correction goes at the top of that article in the same size type as the mistake. We do not quietly edit and we do not delete. Every article carries a sequential correction number; the archive is the whole published record and the numbers are contiguous, so a missing number would be visible.
Right now: 45 lies published, 25 corrections published. 20 headlines are published ahead of their correction. Those are marked correction pending on every card, are not clickable, and appear in the archive as uncorrected. We would rather show you the gap than hide it.
Opinion and cartoons
Editorials are opinion pieces, published under the real name of the person who wrote them. Each one reaches the site the way everything here does — behind an invented headline, with a correction number, counted in the totals above — because the lie is the door, whatever is behind it. Behind this one is an argument, in its author's own words. Where we edit one, we edit it for length, never for substance. Its headline, dek, pull quote and opening paragraph are written by our desk, to lead from the headline you clicked into the piece; everything after that is the author's.
What still applies: the factual claims inside an editorial are checked like any other, and if one of them is wrong we correct the fact in place at the top of the piece. What does not apply: we will not correct a conclusion because a reader disagrees with it.
Comic is editorial cartooning, and it is not part of the lie: a cartoon carries no invented headline and no correction number, and is not counted above. The correction number promises that a specific fabricated claim has a specific true article answering it, and a cartoon has no fabricated claim to answer.
The cartoons are generated, like every other picture on this site, and they carry the same AI-GENERATED IMAGE — OBVIOUSLY FAKE label. The idea, the joke and the words in each panel are the desk's; the picture is made by software, and no person drew it.
Bylines, and who writes this
A byline here tells you whose voice you are reading. An opinion piece carries the real name of the person who wrote it: one of our editors, or a guest contributor named in full. Everything else is published under a house pseudonym — Lady Justice, Black Star or Athena — because it is the desk's work rather than any one person's. A pseudonym is a desk, not a biography.
The desk's articles, and the headlines, deks, pull quotes and opening paragraphs of opinion pieces, are drafted with editorial AI assistance and reviewed by a human editor before publication; nothing reaches this site automatically. Where an article was drafted with model assistance and is awaiting a full editorial verification pass, that is recorded against the story in our editorial system.
Right of reply
Anyone depicted or named in a fake headline can respond, and we will publish the response alongside the item at the same prominence. We do not fabricate quotations from real people; invented quotes are attributed only to characters we state are invented, in the same breath.
Takedown requests
Takedown requests are honored within 24 hours while we review them. We do not publish fabricated claims about health, elections, violence, or any named private person, and we do not depict minors. If something on this site crosses one of those lines, it is a mistake and not a position.