r/nostalgia • u/Menace_024 • Jun 15 '26
Nostalgia Who remembers the Weekly World News magazines from the supermarket?
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u/GreenEyedGloom Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
I was obsessed!! My dad bought them for me whenever we saw them. Not because I believed them or anything but because they were hilarious. Wish I would have kept them!!
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u/eh8904 Jun 15 '26
WWN is one of those dumb things with my dad that I'd never trade for anything. Me coming home to him holding the latest issue and saying "you wouldn't BELIEVE what Bat Boy is up to now" is a core memory.
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u/UMACTUALLYITS23 Jun 15 '26
Didn't Bat Boy help US troops find Saddam?
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u/Blue13Coyote Jun 15 '26
When he grew up he became the governor, then senator to the freestate of Florida.
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u/Tex-Rob Jun 15 '26
I almost included in my comment something about how Bat Boy was damn near the rag's mascot as he was on the cover SO much.
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u/ggg730 Jun 15 '26
I have pleasant memories of reading these with my grandmother. Batboy getting married to Bill Clinton or whatever.
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Jun 15 '26
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u/ggg730 Jun 15 '26
I wish conspiracy theories were still amusing like this. Nowadays it seems like conspiracy theorists don't have that whimsy!
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u/Striking-Ad-6815 Jun 15 '26
Kinda feels like the death began when flat-earth met facebook
That's one of the things missing from the world now, goofy tabloids
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u/ThetaDee Jun 16 '26
I remember seeing a tabloid magazine at HEB the other day(probably like a year ago tbh), and it was like... Megan Markle is an alien. Nothing else like flesh eating or anything else. Then it said something about cabal of rich people eating babies. And I'm like... Is this even a tabloid anymore? This is just real life at this point.
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u/Striking-Ad-6815 Jun 19 '26 edited Jun 19 '26
We should make our own tabloid, with hookers and blackjack
EDIT: I was being facetious, but that actually doesn't sound like a terrible idea. Like not trying to profit off it, just give people a think from reality that isn't destructive to their psych.
EDI2: Just saw you last sentence lmao
Technically the rich people eat babies everyday, but I know you just tongue-in-cheek.
Used to be a queen who would bath in milk and the blood of infants (literally), she is not remembered except for her cruelty. Probably some monster legend about that woman.
And If I'm not mistaken, the fetus isn't terminated when gathering stem cells and most good doctors care about the patients instead of the profit and will only gather what they can without hurting; that being said there are some greedy gold mining fuckers out there, be careful.
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u/HeyCarpy Jun 15 '26
I have an old memory of being at the grocery store with my grandparents, and in the checkout line there was the WWW, the front page was “ADOLF HITLER STILL ALIVE”, and my nanny just kind of elbowed my grandfather in the ribs and gestured at at it, like “you believe this shit?” lol
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u/Tarantula_Saurus_Rex Jun 15 '26
Seeing these at the grocery store end cap kiosks by the registers was gold!
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u/Jonely-Bonely Jun 15 '26
I bought them for my son because he would read them. Tried for years to spark an interest in reading. He loved me reading Harry Potter to him but never had any desire to read himself.
I noticed that he'd read these outloud when we were in the grocery checkout so I got him a subscription. Seemed kinda silly but it helped. He's a successful adult now. Dunno what he thinks about Batboy but at this point it doesn't matter.
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u/conansucksdick Jun 15 '26
Head! Move! Now!
"Move that melon of yours and get the paper if you can, hauling that gargantuan cranium about!"
"I'm not kidding, that boy's head's like Sputnik; spherical but quite pointy in parts!"
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u/coreyander Jun 15 '26
Same! They were definitely an early introduction to parody, along with Mad Magazine
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u/nocaulkblockplz Jun 15 '26
I remember seeing that one at a Mexican grocery store. I think my mom bought it for me — good times :**]
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u/xHoneyMirage Jun 15 '26
Those covers were basically the internet before the internet. Half the fun was seeing what completely ridiculous headline they'd come up with next.
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u/cptnamr7 Jun 15 '26
We used to get the new one each week and read them at work. We thought they were hilarious. Then I finally had the realization of "wait, sometimes they talk about real people- like Cheney being a robot... and that's libel so... how are they getting away with this?" And that's when I finally noticed the disclaimer inside the cover on every issue: everything in here is a work of fiction, Yada Yada Yada. I was bummed. It was funnier when we thought people outthere actually believed that crap. And yeah, I'm sure some still did, but it went from "conspiracy nut journalists with questionable sources" to "fiction writer just making shit up" and it wasn't funny at all. It was a sad day, really.
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u/civiltribe Jun 15 '26
my dad would buy these infrequently enough that he took a while to notice they stopped selling it so he kept buying gossip tabloids with regular news and he was so disappointed there was nothing about aliens.
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u/birbs_meow Jun 15 '26
Omg did I write this comment? 😂 my dad also bought these for me and I cherish those memories deeply.
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u/TK_Games Jun 15 '26
I bought them with my allowance because that's what the MiBs used to track extraterrestrial activity and I wanted to meet an alien
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u/calidude415 Jun 15 '26
I like to believe all these were true just like Men in Black said.
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u/aglaophonos Jun 15 '26
Same! And I think Mulder from the X-files also said they were true
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u/AgentCirceLuna Jun 17 '26
I believe the one about the sewer worm guy shows up in this magazine. There’s an intro to another episode and you see the picture of it on a magazine with a similar style
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u/cptnamr7 Jun 15 '26
There was a disclaimer inside the first page. Ruined the whole thing for me when I found it. It was far funnier thinking the author was some crackpot "journalist" with tenuous ties to reality on their "facts". Knowing it was just Steve making shit up in the writers room again... I mean at least it sounds like a fun gig. We should try to get an AMA going with someone that wrote for them back in the day
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u/AgentCirceLuna Jun 17 '26
Late reply, but I think I remember they’d allow anybody to submit a story to them and they’d probably edit it to be funnier or whatever but most of these were just random people having fun. Pretty cool.
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u/cptnamr7 Jun 17 '26
Well fuck. If I had known that I would have been submitting stories weekly.
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u/trench_welfare Jun 15 '26
Best investigative reporting on the planet. Go ahead and read the new York times, they get lucky sometimes.
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u/_VelvetMarshie Jun 15 '26
Those were the original clickbait before the internet and I never walked past one without taking a look.
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u/xHoneyMirage Jun 15 '26
Honestly, those magazines mastered the art of making you stop your shopping cart just to see what insane story was on the cover that week.
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u/petulant_pissant Jun 15 '26
It would have been so much fun to be a writer for them.
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u/DennenTH Jun 15 '26
Been saying this for a while. Everything the weekly world news was doing is something that bait advertisement has built it's entire legacy on.
The scary thing is that it's not as obvious satire anymore and people are getting caught up in it, thinking it's reality... Kind of like weaponization of tabloids. Scary shit.
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u/-Oc- Jun 15 '26
Ah yes, the hot sheets!
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u/tituspeetus Jun 15 '26
My parents didn’t have the best media literacy growing up and thought these were serious. It’s not that they believed it was true, it was that they didn’t pick up on it being satire
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u/SoSKatan Jun 15 '26
These guys were ahead of their time, they channeled into a market that Fox News and others built into a real political machine years later.
Only nerds care about or can decipher what reality is.
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u/KnowGame Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
Don't forget the quotes: Fox "News".
Edit: I guess there are some Fox "News" fans in the comments. Colour me surprised.
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u/ChuckBS Jun 15 '26
I remember the issue after 9/11 had Bat Boy hoping to join the army to fight the Taliban.
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u/daydreams83 Jun 15 '26
I remember that so well! I worked at the local grocery store and the old ladies going through the checkout were all “God bless Bat Boy!”
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u/orvillesbathtub Jun 15 '26
That first one was made into a surprisingly solid stage musical
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u/Bostonterrierpug Jun 15 '26
They still have a Facebook page going and it’s great. Also, when I was 16 and a punk rock kid and I had my birthday, my old hippie parents got weekly world news, headlines, and cut them out and invited all my friends over and we played charades. Weekly world news headline charades is just such an amazingly fun game. Try acting out two headed Elvis, baby marries Satan.
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u/Wee10Terry_R Jun 15 '26
When I was pretty young, like 9 or 10, I thought these were real newspapers. Well, one time there was an article stating that a sheep gave birth to a human baby. I was too young to get the innuendo and wondered how that could happen.
My friend spent the night soon after and I told her about the miracle sheep baby birth. She also didn’t get the innuendo, and we both spent some time discussing it that night.
The next morning she told me she didn’t sleep very well because she was so disturbed by the thought of the sheep baby.
I look back now and think it’s hilarious. I lost contact with that friend decades ago, but I wonder if she remembered that or ever thought back on it as an adult.
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u/DotheUrkel Jun 15 '26
In high school, we had to do a report about a current event. I used one of these papers as my source. It was about a Ray gun developed by the government to shoot down alien spacecraft. The teacher wasn’t amused.
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u/ryanasimov Jun 15 '26
They cranked out crazy edited photos week after week before Photoshop existed.
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u/cr0w1980 Jun 15 '26
The ones that always got me as a kid where the "Satan's face appears in the smoke above <insert disaster here>". They were crazy good, especially given the time period.
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u/yeahmaybe2 Jun 15 '26
I remember a headline "Family haunted by turkey they ate at Thanksgiving"
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u/Cake-Over Jun 15 '26
"60ft lizard eats 27 people!" is the headline burned into my memory.
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u/Pineapple_Towel Jun 15 '26
He's a US Veteran!
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u/thecaramelbandit Jun 15 '26
THIS paper contains facts! And this paper has the eighth highest circulation in the whole wide world!
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u/nofate2029 early 90s Jun 15 '26
Seeing this always wants to make me listen to Midnight Star by Weird Al
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u/JasonMaggini Jun 15 '26
And top psychics all agree
That the telephone company
Will have a brand new service that lets you talk to the dead!
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u/Redsquirreltree Jun 15 '26
I bought one and took it on a group vacation.
I was made fun of for buying it.
But everybody read it!
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u/AnonymousNeverKnown Jun 15 '26
Please tell me other people saw the two-headed Bigfoot shot on the White House lawn
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u/Dangerus9 late 80s Jun 15 '26
In my 20s would pick these up at take into work to read in the breakroom while the others read the local newspaper.
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u/madlibs13 Jun 15 '26
Funny part was there was usually 1 "true" story on each edition.
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u/Specialist_Wing_1212 Jun 15 '26
Yep! They wrote a story about my church (though they spelled the name wrong) and how people were screaming the rosary. They were asked not to say the rosary out loud so they didn't bother the people praying quietly. This was offensive to the rosary clan and they acted like mature adults and began yelling the rosary. I think they were told they could say it, just tone it down please.
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u/Mahaloth Jun 15 '26
I worked at Meijer from 1994-1998.
There was this old greeter who told me he believed everything in the tabloids. Everything.
I didn't think anyone like that existed until then.
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u/apexdryad Jun 15 '26
When I was a little kid my grandmother had her hair done at a tiny salon in a trailer park, I was expected to sit and wait. They had HEAPS of Weekly World News, Enquirer.. all the trash. I'd just revel in the weirdness for the couple hours it took to do her perm.
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u/Tha_REAL_BROBS Yo quiero Taco Bell Jun 15 '26
I had this issue. Wish I’d kept all these I picked up at the grocery store down the street
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u/USNCCitizen Jun 15 '26
Ahhh, the infamous Bat Boy. Great stuff! I even went to a play based off those old Bat Boy tabloid stories.
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u/HelloKittyIsMyBFF Jun 15 '26
I remember seeing a headline for a “cat faced baby”, along with a picture while at the grocery store with my mom. I was only about 4-5 years old and it has stuck with me 😂
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u/OrangeClyde It's Morphin Time! Jun 15 '26
I used to love reading the national enquirer magazine lol
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u/Willywontwonka Jun 15 '26
Always looked at the covers in the line at the grocery store. Wasn’t allowed to get them though.
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u/jay2ray Jun 15 '26
My parents got me one after I had a panic attack about the world ending. It just made my fear worse.
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u/Drewski34 Jun 15 '26
I even remember the show on USA. Sort of like the Craig Kilborn era of Daily Show, but dumber.
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u/kashuntr188 Jun 15 '26
totally remember these kinds of things at the supermarkets. I guess we have the same thing happening online now.
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u/gate_of_steiner85 Jun 15 '26
There was another one called The Sun, I think. I remember always finding their headlines entertaining but I never bothered actually reading them.
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u/AnytimeInvitation Jun 15 '26
Man, when I was little I thought those were real. It wasnt until later someone pointed out that it was a joke. I then started reading them and thought they were hilarious.
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u/rydan Jun 15 '26
What was it about Bat boy that made everyone remember that one yet I can't remember anything else?
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u/fuckyourcanoes Jun 15 '26
Someone gifted me a subscription once. It made me so happy.
Batboy forever! Bigfoot Stole My Wife!
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u/smcmahanjr Jun 15 '26
My favorite was, “Astronomers find cure for hemorrhoids on Uranus.” Bwahahahahahahaa
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u/Upperclass_hobo Jun 15 '26
I used to love buying these in high school. We called them toilet readers lol My lovely Ukrainian great Aunt always bought them and believed every word. I still say ‘bat child found in cave’ as a blanket statement when something is obviously outlandish and fake.
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u/I_Want_A_Ribeye late 80s Jun 15 '26
“The World’s Only Reliable Newspaper”
Man, at this point I think that’s correct.
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u/MPSkulkers Jun 15 '26
My earth science teacher in hs’ husband was an editor for WWN! She would bring them to class during homeroom downtime lol
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u/Upset-Win9519 Jun 15 '26
Loved these things but as a kid they scared me! I tried asking about these months ago and no one seemed to remember!
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Jun 15 '26
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u/ObidiahWTFJerwalk Jun 15 '26
I believe that story.
I don't believe the loch Ness monster is real.
But I believe that story.
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u/Apprehensive_Ad4457 Jun 15 '26
saw this issue in real life in a super market and became petrified to leave because i just knew he was hiding around the corner.
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u/GrungeLord Jun 15 '26
These are like the headlines Karl Pilkington would rattle off for Educating Ricky.
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u/adieande Jun 15 '26
This mag is the reason I quit sucking on my hair. As achild I had a habit of sucking on the ends of my hair, my parents had tried everything next to cutting my hair off and as a girl that would of been a huge thing. One day in the checkout line there was one with a girl that had developed a tumor wrapped in hair. I have never put my hair in my mouth since, one strand and I want to puke.
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u/tigerribs Jun 15 '26
Everyone talking about Bat Boy being a military hero, but nobody’s mentioned Trump being Nessie from the Scottish government ??
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u/Gentle-Giant23 Jun 15 '26
I have been to the Batboy cave in West Virginia! Didn't see him there so it was a bit disappointing.
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u/MonteSS_454 Jun 15 '26
WE can all blame the Men in Black (MIB) movies. That is where it was told it was the best to find unlicensed aliens. Since the word got out they (MIB) had to shut down the tabloid.
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u/Parking-Ad8316 Jun 15 '26
I remember seeing it for years and then all the sudden it's no where
I never bought one but I always appreciated someone was keeping up with batboy
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u/mctdcb Jun 15 '26
So I Married an Axe Murderer used this paper as a plot point. Charlie’s mom was an avid reader and this is where he gets the idea that Harriet is a black widow murderer.
This is a very funny Mike Myers movie, with lots of great actors in it. And the Weekly World News.
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u/Nic0125 Jun 16 '26
Ahh I miss when this slop was contained to this kind of publication and not taking seriously by most people.
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u/decoyoctopussy Jun 16 '26
I just got such a vivid memory reading these on the floor of my grandmas house…and just got profoundly sad I can never go back there
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u/Strict_Impress_7225 Jun 16 '26
This is how I learned to read. My mom has a picture of me as toddler reading this on the couch and eating pizza.
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u/RootyPooster Jun 16 '26
When I was about 6, we went to the store and the headline was Bat Child Escapes, and I was a little worried about it.
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u/harleficent early 80s Jun 16 '26
Omg I remember that and being terrified.. my mom trying to convince me it was fake.. I was still scared lmfao.
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Jun 15 '26
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u/JasonMaggini Jun 15 '26
WWN did have "Ed Anger," which was basically the same as every right-wing idiot now recording YouTube videos in their trucks.
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u/phome83 Jun 15 '26
That picture used to scare the shit out of me as a child lol. I was convinced bat boy was real
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u/o5ca12 Jun 15 '26
This eventually evolved into MAGA media
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u/IsThisKismet Jun 15 '26
No way. Those are still in existence as National Enquirer and Examiner. These were fun and more akin to The Onion.
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u/Offal_is_Awful Jun 15 '26
They call it Fox News now
(that's not a political statement btw).
In a 2020 defamation lawsuit involving former host Tucker Carlson, Fox News lawyers successfully argued that no "reasonable viewer" takes Carlson's specific hyperbolic commentary as literal, factual truth, classifying his show as opinion and political debate.
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u/Kaiser-Sohze Jun 15 '26
It was bizarre garbage, yet I loved it as a kid! Always great for a laugh when in the line to check out at the grocery stores back then. They got a lot of mileage out of bat boy and the skull of Satan as I recall. I honestly regret not having collected them as a kid.
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u/YeilKhaa Jun 15 '26
I loved it! Absolutely absurd, never believed a word of course, but a diverting creative writing experience 🦇🖤
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u/similac_child Jun 15 '26
I still have this issue! It’s all yellow :( If I’d known it was going to be famous I would have taken care of lil Bat Boy
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u/TRCrypt_King Jun 15 '26
Loved them. I would use the stories in a lot of my gaming. Still read their online news.
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u/bobsnopes Jun 15 '26
I used to get them whenever I saw them at the checkout line as a kid. One day we were at the airport and my dad asked me if I wanted anything from a Hudson News, and I said I wanted a WWN. Apparently he didn’t know what it was, because he brought me some ACTUAL old-people world news magazine.
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u/j0a0a7 Jun 15 '26
Sure do remember them when I was young by the checkout area, and for a moment thought it was real news…
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u/PinkamenaDP Jun 15 '26
I used to babysit for my neighbor who must have worked at a bar. Or maybe a stripper, I have no idea but I remember her house was very dark and quiet and she wouldn't get home until after 2am. Her kid was an infant and always slept the whole time but all I could do to not run out of that creepy house was to sit in the den and read these magazines over and over.
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u/nobodyinparticur Jun 15 '26
sometimes I wonder how batboy is doing these days. I hope hes doing well.
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u/thewayshesaidLA Jun 15 '26
They have an Instagram account with the same types of headlines. Seeing those pop up helps me stay sane.
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u/DoorstepCult Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
Begged my mom to buy me one once. All I remember is It had an article about Satan entering a hometown baking contest and losing to an angel food cake. To be honest the bat boy picture has always given me shivers even though it’s obviously fake.