In a pathetic attempt to pander to current popular tastes in humour, the Toike Oike has recently scraped the bottom of the satirical barrel repeatedly by publishing not one, but multiple articles on the topic of publishing an article.
With agonisingly cringe-worthy titles like “Toike Oike Writer Wanders Off” or “Toike Writer Pens Article Relevant in January, Not Being Published Until February”, the poorly-aging publication has demonstrated not only that they’ve collectively run out of ideas, but that the collectively idiotic writing staff sincerely evaluated the idea of writing about running out of ideas, and thought that that idea, itself, was a good idea.
“This is known as the Deadpool Effect,” explained renowned satirist Ayn Rand. “It refers to a piece of original work which received praise for deprecating the entirety of its own genre, leading to further intentional deprecation, thereby lowering the standard of the genre as a whole. Of course, thereby opening up to more deprecation. The rare literary positive feedback loop.”
Although becoming more common, the Deadpool Effect is on the forefront of literary research, with multiple theories about how the loop is broken.
Frequentist satirists like J. R. R. Toikelien are favourable towards the theory that the loop will eventually result in a cycle back to good quality literature, citing examples in other genres of writing, such as when an author ripped off the entirety of Germanic mythology in a children’s book and received critical praise. Bayesian satirists such as Adam Sandler on the other hand believe that the only way is down, so to speak, whereby the literature will eventually become what is known in literary circles as utter crap simply being churned out for monetary reasons while the creator nostalgically pines for their days as an SNL cast member.
Alternatively to the mainstream, a fringe group of scholarly satirists headed by John of Patmos believe that ultimately the literature will take a third direction, eventually publishing articles about publishing articles about publishing articles, logically followed by publishing articles about publishing articles about publishing articles on publishing articles, therefore also followed by giving power unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth. These are the two olive trees, and the two candlesticks standing before the God of the earth. And if any man will hurt them, fire proceedeth out of their mouth, and devoureth their enemies: and if any man will hurt them, he must in this manner be killed.
Regardless of the theories, scholarly critics agree that the phenomenon is only worsening in the case of the Toike Oike, having devolved from the aforementioned tolerably funny examples last year to the more recent and horrendous “Regular Toike Writer Can’t Think of Anything Clever To Write, Fills 300 Words with Sex Puns (and a long headline)” and “How to Write a Toike Article for Dummies.”
When asked what was in store in the immediate future for the failing newspaper, Rand hypothesised that they would make a feeble attempt to utilise meta-humour in a different way, likely by comparing and contrasting their two senior staff writers in an article based on inside jokes that no one who was not part of the senior staff and editorial team would understand.
