this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2026
53 points (94.9% liked)

Not The Onion

20313 readers
972 users here now

Welcome

We're not The Onion! Not affiliated with them in any way! Not operated by them in any way! All the news here is real!

The Rules

Posts must be:

  1. Links to news stories from...
  2. ...credible sources, with...
  3. ...their original headlines, that...
  4. ...would make people who see the headline think, “That has got to be a story from The Onion, America’s Finest News Source.”

Please also avoid duplicates.

Comments and post content must abide by the server rules for Lemmy.world and generally abstain from trollish, bigoted, or otherwise disruptive behavior that makes this community less fun for everyone.

And that’s basically it!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

It is sadly not a satire article and comment section there has taken it quite seriously as well.

I would have posted an archive.org snapshot instead but the latter refuses to crawl the site due to pay wall restrictions.

top 24 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] pastermil@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 hours ago

These fucktards are putting The Onion out of their job.

[–] Solumbran@lemmy.world 28 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

The kid that brings me my bacon sandwich when I’m hungover is about the height of a small bin, but he’s really lovely and is definitely learning more about the world than he would be sitting in his room.

And that’s the most important thing. Within reason, kids doing part-time jobs will teach them about the world. The grimmer the work they do, the more incentivised they’ll feel to work hard at school so they can avoid a rubbish job.

"Sitting in your room and developing a sense of self and learning to not require permanent social interaction is horrible. Instead, kids should suffer and see how soul-crushing capitalism is, so that they can be terrified into fitting in the mold and will accept settling for shit pays and jobs because they are already used to those"

[–] TranscendentalEmpire@lemmy.today 20 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah.... This is definitely the writing of someone who definitely didn't have to work as a child.

From ages 13-16 I had to work in my uncle's machine shop every summer threading bolts for the local GM plant. I didn't learn anything other than my family is filled with cheap assholes, and now the smell of vegetable coolant makes me sick to my stomach.

Btw if anyone has ever driven around in an early 00s Yukon, there's a good chance that it was put together with bolts fabricated by a 13 year old.

[–] crank0271@lemmy.world 6 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Btw if anyone has ever driven around in an early 00s Yukon, there's a good chance that it was put together with bolts fabricated by a 13 year old.

Boeing has entered the chat

[–] TranscendentalEmpire@lemmy.today 4 points 14 hours ago

Tbh it wouldn't surprise me, the part of ohio that some of my family lives in is filled with a bunch of mom and pop machine shops with contracts from surprisingly large companies.

I guess it's easy to grab the lowest bid when you're powered by the free labour of all the children in your extended family.

[–] lumen@feddit.nl 11 points 15 hours ago (3 children)

What’s wrong with teenagers working a few hours a week? I think that’s a good thing. Where I live, it’s rare for, say, a 17 year old to not work at all.

[–] eatCasserole@lemmy.world 7 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

I'm not sure a 17 year old working a few hours a week is what they're thinking of.

Ok the tone of the article is mostly fuzzy, but it seems the publication did explicitly as for a "defense of child labor" article, which they then published with an Oliver Twist photo. 🤔

[–] riskable@programming.dev 13 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

I'm all for it... As long as they get paid as much as their adult peers!

It's a bad idea to get kids socialized, thinking low pay is ever acceptable.

There should also be mandatory training about wage theft and how serious a crime it is for an employer to expect anyone to show up early or stay late without paying for that extra time. Have a great big award ceremony for the kids that reported employers who were caught pulling that shit! Make the employer pay them an amount equivalent to all the lost wages times three.

You want people to have more kids? Have the state give parents tax benefits (or just checks!) for each child's earnings until they're 25 or so.

[–] RobotToaster@mander.xyz 7 points 15 hours ago

Honestly the headline is a bit clickbait, it's mostly about teenagers having part time jobs.

[–] green_red_black@slrpnk.net 6 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

Ok read the article and the writer is arguing that the 1933 Children and Young Persons Act needs updating as it got a kid that was working in the family food truck removed from his job as a chef and seems to have silly standards for what is or is not acceptable jobs.

Honestly this is not even something the onion would have written

[–] CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

The article isn’t about child labour specifically, but part time jobs for teens. Technically, child labour, but not really the same as a 8 year old coal miner or loom operator. Good click bait!

I worked through my teens but with some important caveats. I worked next to my boss every day, and they started before me and finished after me. I worked outdoors, in relatively decent weather. I was able to take vacation as I desired - even though I only had a few weeks to work, I still was able to take 2 weeks of vacation.

I don’t think my kids will be able to have a similar experience (given my location and market forces), and I don’t want them to grind away their leisure time at minimum wage working in a shitty retail environment with unpredictable hours. When I was working, (50-60hrs a week for the summer) the sum total of my all my teen years up to university didn’t cover the first year’s rent. I hope that I’ll be able to find suitable activities, volunteer opportunities, and learning experiences that they can participate in instead of a job.

[–] village604@adultswim.fan 3 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

I think it's great for teenagers to have jobs, provided they're not paying living expenses with their wages.

I washed dishes after school at a local cafe, and it was a great feeling to get a paycheck for the first time. I started because I wanted an iPod classic and my mom said no.

It was honestly a great life experience. I learned the value of money, I learned to work with people I didn't necessarily care for, and it taught me that I didn't want to do manual labor the rest of my life so I worked a bit harder in school.

[–] CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 13 hours ago

There’s a lot of value to teaching kids the value of their time - and how little they get for it.

The “worked harder in school because of manual labour” didn’t work for me though.

Let's skip to the part where we talk about how much they get paid, if they get paid at all. The type of people that the Torygraph caters to will want a huge workforce of children working for free, because it "builds character".

[–] RobotToaster@mander.xyz 2 points 15 hours ago (1 children)
[–] RmDebArc_5@feddit.org 4 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

You should know that archive.is DDOSed a other site through it's users and those who partake in this might be commiting a crime depending on where you live.

Source

[–] RobotToaster@mander.xyz 4 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

A blog that has been attempting to dox the archive.is owner. The ddos doesn't seem to be very successful either, given it's hosted by wordpress.com, who don't bill based on bandwidth, that isn't surprising. The whole situation seems pretty stupid tbh.

Most jurisdictions require intentionality for it to be a crime.

Unless you have a better solution?

[–] Aatube@thriv.social 2 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

I agree the dispute is stupid, but IMO the more important part here is anrchive.today's undisclosed execution of malware to try and win a dispute.