The UnReal Times

The UnReal Times

Type of site	News Satire
Available in	English
Created by	Karthik Laxman and C.S. Krishna
Website	theunrealtimes.com
Commercial	No
Launched	14 April 2011
Current status	Online

"The UnReal Times" is an Indian satire, spoof, parody and humour portal featuring satirical articles on politics, entertainment, cricket, media, international affairs and society. Founded in 2011, the portal publishes fake news reports, comic strips, mock transcripts, fake Facebook and Twitter conversations among other formats, marrying irreverent humour with biting satire in its commentary on current events. The Unreal Times has often been referred to as The Onion of India (after American satire portal The Onion), most notably by tech blog makeuseof.com.^[1]

History

The UnReal Times was born on 14 April 2011,^[2] when the founders CS Krishna and Karthik Laxman, drained by months of mind-numbing work on a "Shadow Union Budget" under former Finance Minister, Yashwant Sinha,^[3] wrote an article titled "Government mulls direct cash transfers by dropping money bags from the sky" taking a dig at the government's much hyped Direct Cash Transfer schemes. Buoyed by the response to the article, the founders booked the domain name www.theunrealtimes.com, created the first version of The UnReal Times and began to publish one satirical article per day.^[4]

Through social media websites, Facebook and Twitter, the website began to gain traction and rapidly grow in popularity, aided from time to time by viral articles such as "Manmohan Singham",^[5] "BCG hires McKinsey to advise it on how to become number 1",^[6] "Journalist mistakenly interviews Bollywood actor Imran Khan instead of Pakistani cricket legend",^[7] "Stunning Revelation: West Indies' Cricket captain, Darren Sammy, is a Tamil Brahmin!"^[8] and so on.

Features and Columnists

The UnReal Times features a variety of article formats including fake news reports, mock transcripts of cabinet meetings and cricket dressing room conversations, picture series, fake Facebook wall snippets, fake Tweet series and videos. The picture series format is particularly popular among readers, and the columnist responsible for its popularity, Ashwin Kumar, is regarded as one of the top writers in this genre.^[9] Other popular columnists are Ajayendar Reddy, whose article on Dr. Raghuram Rajan was widely referenced in mainstream media and became a cult hit,^[10][11][12] Anand Walunjkar, Divya Srikanth, Lokesh Bahety, Pankaj Vaidya, Pritam Chatterjee, and Srini Chandra. Some columnists write under pen names, among them are D-MAN, Hitler Swamy and Insane Insaan. The editors write under the pen name UnReal Mama.

Acclaim from celebrities and mainstream media

The UnReal Times is followed by several eminent Indian personalities

• Union minister for Rural Development Jairam Ramesh reportedly emailed his friends an Unreal Times article parodying his hairstyle, to convey that satire and humour isn't lost on India's politicians.^[13]
• Actress Gul Panag, who follows The UnReal Times on Twitter said, "I love their satirical take on current affairs. To get comic relief while being to follow a topical matter is always welcome."^[14]
• Current Prime minister Narendra Modi has been known to use some of UnReal Times wisecracks while he's criticising his political opponents. For instance, his quote^[15] that Dr. Manmohan Singh should win an Oscar for acting as India's Prime Minister and his labelling^[16] of Dr. Singh as 'Singham' for his pro-FDI policies are thought to be inspired from similar UnReal Times articles,^[5][17] leading some to believe that the CM or his PR team follow The UnReal Times. The CM also shared an UnReal Times article from his Twitter account in a rare moment of levity on Twitter.^[18]
• Other eminent figures who are known to follow The UnReal Times are BJP leader Arun Jaitley,^[19] Janata Party leader Subramanian Swamy (on Twitter), economist Bibek Debroy (on Twitter), actress Konkana Sen Sharma (on Twitter), journalists such as Pritish Nandy(on Twitter), Swapan Das Gupta,^[19] Barkha Dutt,^[20] Sucheta Dalal (on Twitter) and several others. Several other prominent personalities such as Shashi Tharoor,^[21] Chetan Bhagat,^[22] Lalit Modi,^[23] Ajay Devgn^[24] have shared Unreal Times articles on social media from time to time.

The UnReal Times has also been mentioned in mainstream media several times.

• Outlook magazine, in one of its articles, said, "...on the other hand, it has also inspired some brilliant satire in web magazines like The UnReal Times which almost daily brings out rollicking spoofs on the Gandhis and Congress luminaries..."^[25]
• India Today in a feature on The UnReal Times says, "Do we have the ability to laugh at ourselves? Two IIMA graduates are testing our humour quotient with a website that pokes fun at all and sundry, especially politicians..."^[26]
• FirstPost.com based one of its articles on an UnReal Times spoof titled 'Kejriwal widens attacks, demands thorough probe into how Priyanka Gandhi could fall for a chap like Vadra'.^[27]
• The Economist cited articles from the The Unreal Times in its article on political satire in India ^[28]
• A tweet from The UnReal Times Twitter handle (@theunrealtimes) was mentioned in Malayala Manorama's weekly "The Week". The magazine also acknowledged The UnReal Times on the same page.
• The UnReal Times or its articles have also been featured or linked to in DNA,^[29] Sydney Morning Herald,^[30] Bloomberg^[31] New York Times^[32] and so on.

Controversies

In August 2011, The UnReal Times released a video titled Manmohan Singham, featuring Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh (morphed over Singham protagonist Ajay Devgn) as an action hero fighting evils such as inflation, corruption, terrorism and so on. The video went viral on Facebook and Twitter, and was also shared by Ajay Devgn on his Twitter and Facebook. However, Congress party workers in some states were not amused, and went on to file complaints with cyber crime cells of their respective states.^[3]

In early 2013, an UnReal Times article on IIPM founder Arindam Chaudhuri titled 'Dare to think beyond Google: Arindam Chaudhuri launches Ponytail Search' was blocked by the Department of Telecom along with over 70 other URLs on the basis of a court order after Arindam Chaudhari sought legal action against pages critical of his organization.^[33]

UnReal Elections

In April 2014, the founders of The UnReal Times launched "Unreal Elections" a satirical novel published by Penguin Random House. The book traces key political events in the year leading to General Elections 2014 with imaginative and fictitious accounts of backroom machinations, eventually resulting in an unexpected climax towards the end. The book received positive reviews in mainstream media - Business Standard wrote that the book "will leave you breathless with waves of irresistible and uncontrollable laughter".^[34] Mid-day.com wrote: "Be prepared to laugh a lot at the humorous proceedings but also to feel a tinge of sadness about the murkiness of politics".^[35]

News taken seriously

A reputed daily Tamil newspaper Dina Thanthi mistook a satire article to be real and posted it on their website. Original article on The UnReal Times read "US to transport 20,000 gallons of breathable air for Obama’s visit to Delhi for Republic Day".

See also

• List of satirical magazines
• List of satirical news websites
• List of satirical television news programs
• Tinpahar
• Muse India

References

1. Parrack, Dave. "Faking It: 8 Of The Best Spoof News Websites". MakeUseOf.com.
2. "An interview with The Unreal Times founders : MagnaMags". magnamags.com.
3. "Web of true lies - The Times of India". The Times Of India.
4. Hebbar, Nistula. "Modern Day Aesops". The Times of India.
5. "Video: Watch the trailer of 'MANMOHAN SINGHAM' starring Dr. Manmohan Singh". The UnReal Times.
6. "BCG hires McKinsey to advise it on how to become number 1". The UnReal Times.
7. "Journalist mistakenly interviews Bollywood actor Imran Khan instead of Pakistani cricket legend". The UnReal Times.
8. "Stunning revelation: West Indies' cricket captain, Darren Sammy, is a Tam brahm!!!". The UnReal Times.
9. Nagarajan, Uthra (2013-08-21). "Not just for laughs". The Hindu. Chennai, India.
10. "Raghuram's handsomeness averts India's crisis". The Times of India.
11. Raman, Kripa. "The new Rajan". Mumbai Mirror.
12. Bose, Adrija. "How 'Rockstar' Rajan is storming Twitter, Tumblr". FirstPost.
13. Iyer, Shekhar. "Narendra Modi, Milind Deora in Twitter twister". Hindustan Times.
14. Chaturvedi, Devika. "The Ideas Factory: With Malice for All". India Today.
15. "Manmohan Singh got an Oscar for acting as PM: Narendra Modi". DNA. |first1= missing |last1= in Authors list (help)
16. "Narendra Modi calls Manmohan 'Singham for foreigners'". OneIndia.in. |first1= missing |last1= in Authors list (help)
17. "Dr. Manmohan Singh wins lifetime achievement Oscar for acting as India's Prime Minister". The UnReal Times.
18. "Narendra Modi on Twitter". Twitter.
19. "Swapan Dasgupta on Twitter". Twitter.
20. "barkha dutt on Twitter". Twitter.
21. "Shashi Tharoor on Twitter". Twitter.
22. http://tweetwood.com/chetan_bhagat/tweet/220052168261120000
23. http://in.tweetwood.com/LalitKModi/tweet/206768467238600704
24. "Did Ajay Devgn rope in Dr Manmohan Singh to promote Singham?". BollywoodLife.com.
25. Bose, Ajoy. "The Mango Harvest". Outlook.
26. Chaturvedi, Devika. "The Ideas Factory: With Malice for All". India Today.
27. Chaudhry, Lakshmi. "The Robert Vadra mystery: Forget property, how did he acquire Priyanka?". FirstPost.com.
28. Banyan (2013-05-21). "All the news that's fit to fake". The Economist. Retrieved 21 May 2013.
29. Chaturvedi, Devika. "Will the real Imran Khan". DNA.
30. Rakic, Josh. "Gold Coast contest could leave Slater high and dry". Sydney Morning Herald.
31. Choudhury, Chandrahas. "India's Ultimate Insider Tries for Outsider Status". Bloomberg.
32. Timmons, Heather (2012-08-27). "Parody, or Actual Government of India Statement?". New York Times.
33. "Call me ugly but don't attack my business, says Arindam Chaudhari". Firstpost.
34. "'Unreal Elections' : An unnaturally incisive view of the 2014 polls (Book Review)". Business Standard.
35. "Unreal Elections". Mid-day.

External links

• Official website
• http://tamil.theunrealtimes.com - Focus on Tamil Nadu politics and events.