The Onion Is Launching A Web Series Parodying Vice; “Throwing Acid In The Face Of Ignorance”

Though they’ve been around in many forms since 1994 — print, online, TV, film, music — Vice haven’t really changed much over the years. Though the audience has grown, adapted, and become increasingly diverse, their content still seems to be marketed to club kids who smoke weed to talk about the Middle East, and non-religious people who have crucifixes tattooed on their forearms.

I know that’s a huge generalisation, but whatever. Vice’s documentary series in particular — episodes with titles like ‘American Scrap and Children of the Drones’, ‘Heroin Warfare and the Coldest War’, and ‘Terrorist University and Armageddon Now’, which often feature weedy white dudes aimlessly running around conflict zones — is absolutely ripe for parody, regardless of its virtues.

And now, The Onion has obliged. After their latest venture, ClickHole, took on The Entire Internet last year (and possibly became the best thing on it), the satirical media company today announced Raw: a web series of “immersive reporting that is uncaged, unaccountable, and totally fucked up.”

“Vice is wrought with a distinct self-confidence, which of course gets our writers salivating,” The Onion’s VP of Production George Zwierzynski Jr told The Hollywood Reporter. “We’re always keeping on eye on the changing landscape of media and the way news stories are being told.”

Releasing short clips from the start of next month, Edge will satirise the media outlet in the same kind of way as parody Twitter account @Vice_Is_Hip. The show’s even started accounts for itself and its ‘reporters’ that work on a similar premise:

RT if you own a sword carved from a human femur.

— EDGE (@EDGEtv) July 28, 2015

We throw acid in the face of ignorance.

— EDGE (@EDGEtv) July 28, 2015

Nobody points a camera at dark-skinned people like @EDGEtv. Nobody.

— Chase Vaughn (@ChaseVaughnEDGE) July 28, 2015

In bank lobby and there are cameras EVERYWHERE. Welcome to the modern-day surveillance state, people.

— Nic Moss (@NicMossEDGE) July 28, 2015

Let's get fucked on truth.

— Nic Moss (@NicMossEDGE) July 28, 2015

It’s pretty great — and made slightly better by the fact Vice chose this week to new women’s interest channel:

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Edge will be released online from August 3.