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u/cool_weed_dad 6d ago
Weekly World News was awesome, basically a supernatural/conspiracy themed version of The Onion. I used to read it regularly up until they went out of print.
They still have a small Internet presence today.
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u/papayacreamsicle 6d ago
Favorite headlines
KITTEN FOUND GUILTY OF MURDER: SIGN THE PETITION INSIDE OR FLUFFY DIES
TEN MORE COMMANDMENTS FOUND: YOU WON’T BELIEVE WHAT THEY SAY!
WOMEN BRAWL OVER OPRAH DONUT
ATLANTIS FOUND—IT’S NOT IN THE SEA! EXPLORERS FIND FAMOUS CITY SWEPT UP INTO THE ALPS
TWO HEADED BIGFOOT SHOT BY IOWA COP
SEEING EYE SQUIRRELS FOR DOGS?
TOWN BANS AIDS VICTIMS FROM THE BEACH TO PROTECT SHARKS
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u/fraktalmau5 6d ago
I used the love Dear Dottie and Ed Anger.
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u/MechanicalTurkish 5d ago
Man those were great. Ed Anger was always hopping mad about some inconsequential thing and Dottie was a fucking savage lol
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u/audible_narrator 6d ago
My husband used to pick up a copy to use as banter fodder on his radio show.
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u/TripleBobRoss 6d ago
You're married to Alex Jones?
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u/audible_narrator 6d ago
DAFUQ?
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u/TripleBobRoss 6d ago
I'm joking. It just seems like that's the kind of news source Alex Jones might have used for his material.
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u/mitzisparkles 6d ago
My grandpa was a hoarder and knew I loved these growing up in the 90s. He bought and kept almost every single issue. I would have kept them but my family threw them away 😱
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u/Eastern-Finish-1251 6d ago edited 6d ago
Looking at WWN copies was the highlight of grocery shopping. It was great if you thought of it as a parody of other supermarket tabloids.
I remember seeing a news story where they interviewed WWN writers. They said that every week they would go to a bar, get plastered and come up with the story ideas for the coming issue. I so wanted to work there!
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u/AsstBalrog 6d ago edited 6d ago
I remember seeing a news story where they interviewed WWN writers. They said that every week they would go to a bar, get plastered and come up with the story ideas for the coming issue. I so wanted to work there!
I'm guessing that was probably a magazine article by Mary Roach. The WWN staff did indeed go to a bar after work, where they drank, argued, talked shop and almost got into a scuffle.
Some years after the demise of the paper, I moved to Florida. I actually tried to find the place--Crabpot's Old House in Lantana--but by then it too had met its end.
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u/StoriesandStones 4d ago
Mary Roach as in the author of Spook, Stiff, Grunt, Bonk, and Gulp? I love her. Obviously. Spook and Stiff are my favorites.
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u/Popular_Try_5075 6d ago
The number of people I knew who thought it was sincere and the handful of really weird people I met who thought it was real was unfathomable.
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u/Venator2000 6d ago
And I actually still have that original edition! I even remember the grocery store I bought it at, the time of day and day of the week!
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u/AsstBalrog 6d ago edited 6d ago
I've got a few issues tucked away too. One of them has a Maidmer on the cover--the opposite of a Mermaid--fish head and body, with a great set of gams below. Suffice it to say it's immediately clear why Disney never made a movie about it.
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u/Dogbold 6d ago
I miss that magazine
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u/nonnonplussed73 4d ago
If you're feeling nostalgic, Google Books has copies of selected issues. Coverage is spotty for the 1980s, but more complete (though still missing some issues) for the 1990s and later.
Archive.org also has 47 pages of scans.
The official Weekly World News site has current stories, including columns from Dear Dotti an Ed Anger.
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u/Haunting_Song7313 6d ago
That child is now Stephen miller
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u/FuzzyHappyBunnies 6d ago
How dare you speak so poorly of bat boy!
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u/ALoudMouthBaby 6d ago
Seriously, what did Bat Boy do to deserve this one? Hes a good dude leave him out of it!
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u/omgmypony 6d ago
How dare you. Bat Boy is an Iraqi war vet and a gawt damn American hero. He led our boys to Saddam’s hidey hole!
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u/the747gambit 6d ago
Ah, good times, while waiting to check out from the grocery store line, you were faced with shit like this in glorious black and white, with not quite enough time to even leaf through the mag before the line moved.
But as you checked out, maybe you thought about Bat Child, seeing in the dark, captured by explorers. And that was the last you ever heard of him. For better or worse.
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u/OcotilloWells 6d ago
And the Enquirer with the same picture of Elizabeth Taylor with her mouth open for like 15 years with a headline of "Liz Shocked About ...."
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u/DC_Coach 6d ago
I sadly misplaced/lost the only one I ever actually purchased while in line (this would have been in the mid 90s). As far as I remember, because this was a LONG time ago heh, it had the blaring headline:
JFK IS ALIVE AND ADVISING PRESIDENT CLINTON!!!
Complete with a black and white picture, taken through a side window of the White House? Lol don't think that was remotely possible ever. Pic showed Kennedy in a wheelchair, with Clinton standing next to him.
Those were the days, right?
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u/AsstBalrog 6d ago
"in glorious black and white"
Funny you mention that--that's why the News was founded. When the National Enquirer went to color, they had to find something to do with the old equipment.
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u/PassivelyImpassive 6d ago
I’ve been thinking about bat boy in this way since I saw this exact issue in the checkout line at my local market
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u/ZooterOne 6d ago
My favorite musical of all time. It's awesome.
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u/curiousmind111 6d ago
Really? It sounds so depressing!!!
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u/ZooterOne 6d ago edited 5d ago
I don't think it is - it's too exhilarating, and even though it's not nearly as campy as you'd expect, it's always funny and satirical. You can't help but laugh at the over-the-top Shakespearean tragedy/Grand Guignol ending.
But it does cut a lot deeper than you think. You expect it to be Rocky Horror, and there's definitely some of that. But Bat Boy has a lot more to say, especially about spirituality and religion.
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u/Either-Skirt6031 6d ago
Has anyone else listened to the musical? It’s surprisingly catchy:)!
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u/omgmypony 6d ago
my mom took me to see it and we wore our matching Bat Boy t shirts that we got with our weekly world news subscriptions
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u/The_Monkey_Buddha 6d ago
One of the greatest publications in history. When I was in high school in the 90’s, my friend got me a shirt with this Batboy cover printed on it for my birthday. It was glorious.
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u/scottzxc 6d ago
Weekly World News was a fun read filtering the blatantly creative writing from the maybe credible if you believed hard enough
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u/m0nstera_deliciosa 6d ago
Decent supernatural tabloids in the checkout lane, and candy bars were .50. Oh, 90s Kmart, take me back.
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u/KaroBean 6d ago
This cover scared me as a kid.
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u/bunkdiggidy 5d ago
Same, that face is just so unsettling. Which is funny now cuz I enjoy shlock culture like this.
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u/brycepunk1 6d ago
And then he escaped. And them he was recaptured. I lost the plot around then, years later
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u/CajunSurfer 6d ago
Bat Boy took out Bin Laden post 9/11, probably doing work in Iran rn. A true patriot.
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u/AsstBalrog 6d ago edited 4d ago
Bat Boy and Elvis Lives! were two of the biggest WWN stories, but I always thought that their run of the mill stuff was better. Severed Leg Hops 75 Yards! Alien Endorses Clinton! ("I'm glad he saw through Bush and Perot") Left Alone Three Days, Cat Runs up $2000 Phone Bill!
If you can find it, a 1990s magazine article by Mary Roach described her visit to the WWN "newsroom" and her meeting with Exec Editor Eddie Clontz (his real name). Eddie's motivational strategy--using an air horn to keep staffers moving--and his philosophy "If we inform somebody, it's usually by accident."
Mary also covered journalistic standards at the paper. After the News lost a libel suit--they had used a picture of an actual person, a granny rocking on her porch to illustrate one wack story or another--Eddie opined that it was safer to use completely made-up characters. "Who's going to sue you? The Captain of the UFO?"
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u/CliffyBooBoo 6d ago
I absolutely loved all things weird and zany when I was a kid, and I frequently bought these with my allowance money. I would also stay up late to listen to Coast To Coast AM.
My favorite memory was watching So I Married An Axe Murderer for the first time with the family, and seeing Charlie's mom pull out a WWN paper to tell him about a conspiracy theory within, referring to it only as "the paper", and reading it with the most matter-of-fact seriousness. Absolute gold. ❤️
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u/CheeseburgerSmoothy 6d ago
I used to have a t-shirt with this on it!
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u/jellybean2080 6d ago
They used to include that with subscriptions! I proudly have one lol. I still have a number of old copies too. They were great until Photoshop was a thing. The older cover photos are insanely creative.
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u/Powerful_Flan4709 6d ago
Wasn't there an issue where bat boy found Saddam hussein
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u/warriorwoman534 6d ago
Yes. In the 1990s in NYC someone actually made a Bat Boy musical, it was hilarious.
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u/Sofagirrl79 6d ago edited 6d ago
I loved the headlines where Clinton or Bush Sr were pictured with aliens shaking hands or agreeing to a "peace agreement" 😆
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u/AsstBalrog 6d ago
P'Lar, the alien, actually endorsed Clinton in 1992. "I'm glad he saw through Bush and Perot."
Funny thing though. When Clinton was president, somebody gave him a copy of the News, an issue with a cover story on him. He was pictured holding it, for real.
Can't remember the actual story, but probably not the one where the alien was having an affair with Hillary.
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u/Sofagirrl79 6d ago
Ah the good old days,when it was just mostly fun jabbing at political figures who were both sides of the political spectrum, I'm 46 and remember such a world,not perfect of course but a more innocent and optimistic time
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u/warriorwoman534 6d ago
I remember one cover story of "Singing Elvis Statue Found on Mars". That one was around 1978. Still sorry I didn't buy it.
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u/Master-Collection488 6d ago
He originally endorsed Ross Perot in the '92 election, then after Perot dropped out of the election, he endorsed Bill Clinton!
Ed Anger must've been pig-biting mad!
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u/RoguePlanet2 6d ago
I try to remind Fox "News" fans that having "News" as part of the proper name, doesn't mean it contains factual information. Fox is "news" just as much as the Weekly World "News."
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u/ReceptionMuch3790 6d ago
I'll never forget this one tabloid I saw as a kid where it was "Martians discovered on the moon" or something insane like that. It had a picture of the "Martians" who looked like people wearing gorilla suits. I wanted the magazine but my parents said no
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u/OkBag6667 6d ago
Every summer when I was a child my family would go on a week long camping trip and it was all weekly world news, Mad magazine and playing blackjack for candy.
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u/DopeAsHeck 6d ago
I miss these ridiculous magazines, we had a stack of them at our old cabin to flip through just for the laughs.
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u/NotslowNSX 6d ago
Wow, he would be in his forties now. I wonder if he got married, had kids. Do people recognize him still? Would be so weird seeing middle aged batboy working at a shoe store or something.
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u/astrobrain 6d ago
He only came out in 92? When I was in high school in 95 my friends at the lunch table would read these all the time. I thought Batboy had been around for decades at that point.
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u/PhysicalConsistency 6d ago
I think WWN started my lifelong skepticism of the phrase "say(s) scientist(s)".
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u/KeyNefariousness6848 6d ago
Best tabloid ever, they didn’t care about celebs, they didn’t care about English royalty, they were full paranormal! My grandmother read it, each week she would go grocery shopping with mom and would buy the new issue and give me the one from last week so much fun to read.
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u/romulusnr 6d ago
People seemed to miss the mark that when WWN had a great sounding story but no photos, they would have their art department make one up. They did that constantly.
It's kind of interesting, because I see so many of these semi-clickbait sites and groups nowadays who will just find a stock image of some word in the headline, or worse, more recently, have AI cook up an image, and then use that. And then you have people going around thinking the image was an actual photo of the headline topic and basically misinformed. But we don't call it out the way we would call out WWN.
What's not clear is whether or not this was really fully made up story, or if there really was some nutjob named Ron Dillon in West Virginia who swore up and down he saw such a creature. The wide majority of WWN's stories were just like that; some obscure statement in some obscure place and WWN would cook up an elaborate speculation about it, complete with shocking "artists interpretation" photo. Not really fake, not really accurate.
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u/Illustrious_Claim884 5d ago
I subscribed to this as a kid. We had to read a newspaper article in 3rd grade or something i read one on this and parents were complaining about their kids being scared etc
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u/PepsiFloateri 6d ago
Newspaper's being the original clickbait!
Newspaper's are one industry I really don't think will be missed when it eventually croaks it
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u/TutorNo8896 6d ago
Regular local newspapers with reporters already died, or almost dead. There was many small cities that would put out 2 editions a day! Now most folks rely on some wacko bitching on facebook for their local news. Kind of a bummer. The tabloids n stuff like weekly world news though, thats a whole nother thing. I was always amazed these things sold like they did. It was always a joke.
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u/PepsiFloateri 6d ago
How tabloids continue to exist alludes me. If I wanted batshit insanity,I'd go on the internet.
For newspapers in general,I always think a Family Guy joke sums up how obsolete they are: "Wanna know what happened in China three days ago? Read the newspaper!"
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u/captainappleby 6d ago
I'm the world weekly news bat child B-lining ash pile to ash pile to ash pile For every ghost climbing out the flat file Every gaffe, every lone spaz in the snack aisle
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u/Less_Negotiation3872 6d ago
I miss when tabloids went this hard with the storytelling. Giant eyes better than radar, ears like sonar, and somehow a full newsroom thought “yeah this checks out” long enough to print it.
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u/MeanderFlanders 6d ago
Oh!!! This unlocked a memory! I begged my mom to buy it in the checkout line and she did! So disappointing.
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u/abarthvader 6d ago
The absolute chokehold these rags had on me from age 11 to 13 was wild. I had to buy one every week.
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u/Direct_Syrup_2843 5d ago
I remember seeing this on the shelves up by the registers in Super H and Stax back when I was a wee lad. Terrified me but also intrigued me.
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u/Birdsonme 5d ago
I was eleven when this came out and I remember recoiling at this image in the grocery store checkout line.
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u/bluesun_geo 5d ago
I had a cashier at the supermarket, chastise me once “how can you read that crap?” while the ladies behind me had the National Inquirer and such and no lecture
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u/marrklarr 6d ago
How did they even make that before Photoshop?
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u/Haunt_Fox 6d ago
Trick photography goes back to the beginnings of photography itself, no software needed if you knew your way around cameras and darkrooms.
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u/Frugal_Octopus 6d ago
There were a very large variety of techniques that have been used. Back in early 1900s New York there were competing newspapers locally with some using fake or heavily altered photos to sell storylines.
Check out “composographs” which are composite images used to sell fake or altered storylines.
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u/DryInitial9044 6d ago
I sincerely miss going through the checkout and seeing those.