Culture

Three Satirical #Auspol Accounts You Should Probably Start Following

For those who like their Australian politics skewered over a roast.

by Josh Butler  18 June 2014

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Australia may not have its own Jon Stewart, John Oliver or Stephen Colbert, or really anyone besides The Chaser to lead the charge for political satire — but on social media, humour about news and current affairs is alive and well and very, very strange.

If you like your #auspol roughly skewered, here three of our favourite social media accounts to follow.

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@Kevin2000

The first jump down the rabbit hole into the satire metaverse is Kevin 2000, a Twitter account that lives in a slightly warped Australian political environment where the spelling is creative and Kevin Rudd is still king — and it’s all thanks to Seinfeld.

@SeinfeldToday, or Modern Seinfeld, is a popular yet rarely humorous Twitter account that imagines how episodes of the sitcom juggernaut might look in the modern day: “Elaine’s negative Yelp review goes viral”; “Jerry’s gf won’t stop talking about her selfies.”

In response, @Seinfeld2000 arrived, parodying the parody of Seinfeld with poorly spelled ideas; “George buys a laser disk player from krame but accidentaly puts milk in it”; “Snoop Dogg change name to Snoop Nazi”.

Kevin2000 is the inevitable Australian political response to @seinfeld2000… well, it wasn’t inevitable, but someone is doing it anyway, creating a world where besties Craig Emerson and Tim Mathieson send each other Snapchats, ‘Jolya’ Gillard keeps Tim under the thumb, and Anthony ‘Ablo’ Albanese is an unstoppable eating machine.

Some of the updates are niche, requiring a pretty decent understanding of what is happening in the day’s news (“Toney Abert make YouTube video private wish John Paul George and Ringo good luck at World Cup”), and others are just laugh out loud funny.

The account is almost political cartoon-ish in its exaggeration of traits, mannerisms and appearances – Joe Hockey’s greatest love affair is with a kebab, Tony Abbott lies his way around the world, Bill Shorten relaxes in the wings – but journalists, TV hosts and others are also in the firing line, with Andrew Bolt, Chris Kenny and #qanda all popping up regularly.

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@DeptOfAustralia

Adding quotes on the bottom of standard photographs is no new innovation, but Dept. Of Australia is in a league of its own.

Sourcing pics of the day from newspapers and news sites, this account skewers all and sundry, from the more ridiculous staged photo ops to more mundane shots of question time in parliament.

Unfair? Possibly. Funny? Definitely. When pollies set themselves up for ridicule with such ridiculous photo ops, it’s a fair shake of the sauce bottle mate.

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Simpsons Against The Liberals, Liberals Against The Simpsons, and so on

Now in its 25th year, The Simpsons has been transmogrified from fictional small-town America to modern day Australia through some creative captioning, a fair bit of lateral thinking and artistic license, and a very limited Photoshop/Microsoft Paint image editing by Simpsons Against The Liberals.

Post by The Simpsons against the Liberals.

Abbott variously becomes Mr Burns, Bart or Homer; Hockey is often resigned to his sidekick, as Milhouse or Smithers. And classic scenes and episodes take on new life when transported to #auspol – most effectively, the ‘Bart vs Australia’ episode, but also Mr Burns singing ‘Let’s All Go To The Lobby’, the ‘Homer Bad Man’ episode, and the ‘Nobody Likes Milhouse!’ classic.

Post by The Simpsons against the Liberals.

Simpsons Against The Liberals started in mid-May, but it didn’t take long for a Liberals Against The Simpsons page to arrive. A legitimate response from the Liberal Party? Or another layer in the meta-ness?

Post by Liberals Against The Simpsons.

The memes were lame, the jokes were bad, and the fonts were Comic Sans — so up popped the Simpsons against the liberals against simpsons against the liberals page, turning the whole thing into a giant teetering Jenga tower of Simpsons screen caps and political jokes.

Post by Simpsons agains the liberals against simpsons against the liberals.

Any other accounts worth recommending? Please leave them in the comments.

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Josh Butler has written for Groupie Magazine, Pages Digital, Oyster Magazine and BLUNT. A variation of this piece was originally published on his blog.

Feature image via @DeptOfAustralia