'El Mundo Today', the outlet that made the satire viral: "If the most widely read joke is about Sergio Ramos, we are not going to make another one about him every day"

Before

there

.

Xavi Puig (Barcelona, ​​41 years old) and Kike García (Barcelona, ​​40 years old) created in June 2002, while they were studying philosophy, a platform that was defined as an “electronic journal of philosophy or something like that”.

In it, under a pseudonym, they shared satires (the term will appear again shortly in this article) about the university environment and articles such as Paris Hilton's Stoic philosophy course ("man only has the privilege of accepting what he does not can understand as being finite. Not finite of having soft skin, but of not being able to reach everything”).

In 2007, while both were studying Audiovisual Communication, Esponjiforme died.

was born in 2009, in a different reality, with one living in Madrid and the other in Barcelona.

Its first published news item was: “According to a survey, 100% of Spaniards have answered a survey at some time”, although whoever consults the web news archive, which officially begins in January 2009, will find an isolated news item in September 1998. Under a screenshot of Google's original home page, it reads: "Two stupid college kids program a new web search engine unaware that Yahoo!" already exists.

“In Spain there is an important tradition of satirical humour, the land was not empty when we arrived”, explain Puig and García.

“But maybe on the Internet, especially when we started.

There was

, the blog that Juan Cavestany set up with a friend and that, although perhaps it did not cultivate satire as much, had very good headlines, especially those with costumbrista humor.

The first online satirical medium with a mass audience was indeed ours, and it is still the only one of these proportions, profitable and

, if we do not have the digital edition of

which, although it is not a satirical newspaper, did not take long to incorporate the headlines as soon as you saw that they worked”.

The Today World

, with 100,000 page views a day, 1.5 million followers on Twitter and almost 460,000 on Instagram, has become a medium that everyone knows in Spain, it has left a trail that reaches the language: "It seems

”, is said of a delusional or implausible news.

It is said so much that news aggregators with a similar design (which have nothing to do with

) have also emerged in the wake of the web's success.

Despite everything, it seems that reality is sometimes its only imitator.

"We are still a bit alone in this digital humor literature," they admit.

The times do not help:

was born at a time when Facebook was coddling the media.

"But then he ended up kidnapping our readers," they lament.

Cover of 'The horoscope of El Mundo Today'.

The foreword is by Albert Einstein.

After publishing a history book and a corrected and enlarged edition of the Spanish Constitution,

returns to bookstores with a horoscope book (

), one of the sections most loved by web readers, according to its creators.

“We parody any content that can be found in the serious press and unfortunately this is still being published in the serious press.

The most curious thing about this book is that, being a mockery of the horoscope, it activates exactly the same mechanism as the normal horoscope, which must appeal to something very primary into which we all fall.

People open our horoscope and the first thing they do is go see what we say about their sign.

Even if they don't believe in it and make fun of it like us!

It's addictive, but in our case it treats the reader like a person with their feet on the ground, not in the stars”.

Don't let anyone ask Xavi or Kike what sign they are, they won't fall for that.

“Do you know what marks personality?

Being born on the specific day a war breaks out in your country.

And it is relatively easy to venture certain things that are going to mark you.

The rest is a fool and we do not understand that fashion

to defend the horoscope, the tarot and all these farces, not simply taking them from the historical, anthropological or aesthetic point of view, but buying what they promise.

Define "satire"

But exactly what is satire?

“Satire aims to make people laugh by pointing at something or someone, either caricaturing it, reducing it to absurdity or, in short, making fun of what they do or say, pointing out their inconsistencies or indecency.

They are jokes that have a thesis, go.

This does not mean that it is a solid or fully articulated thesis, it is difficult for it to even constitute an argument.

They are more like discussion starters: a starting point that can encourage serious conversation about the issue.

Who reads

hoping to find arguments or recipes for thought is misguided.

Laughter is the priority, and the thesis is subject to it.

In this context of exaggeration it is impossible to propose a solid speech, that cannot be required of the humorist, who will still prefer demagoguery if it arouses laughter to a more tepid and pamphleteer joke, however much the thesis that he defends is better directed.

It is inevitable, despite everything, that the reader seeks in our satire a reaffirmation of his ideas, which we have also satirized”.

(The satire was this: "A joke that reinforces his ideology, the funniest this young man has read in a long time", signed by Javi Ramos).

The news reads as follows: “This morning, the satirical newspaper

has published a joke that Juan Camuñas, 27, already considers to be the funniest he has read in a long time.

Although the joke is perhaps not the most ingenious on this satirical website, the fact that it reinforces Camuñas's ideology has made it "an absolute genius," in his own words.

For Camuñas, the authors of this satirical newspaper are 'brilliant' because from time to time they make jokes that make him think that his beliefs are correct and the beliefs of those who do not think like him are wrong”.

Xavi Puig and Kike García during a speech at the 2016 Ondas Awards.Albert Garcia

If you ask Xavi and Kike if that news worked, it is possible that they do not know the answer or, at least, they are not too interested in that information.

“We have stopped measuring success.

We don't know what the most read news is today, or this week, or of the year.

Information is just a click away, but we do not consult it.

Why?

Because it has never served us at all.

If the most read joke of the year is about Sergio Ramos, we are not going to react by making a joke about Sergio Ramos every day.

That strategy, by the way very common, is stupid.

Our measure of success is the degree of satisfaction that we ourselves feel with respect to our work, and if you ignore Kike, who is never satisfied, the curve is upwards”.

They do remember more accurately the news that has brought them problems.

One of them was headlined “Panini launches a sticker album with the most wanted criminals”.

They had to pull lawyers for Panini's financial request.

About Mariló Montero they chose to withdraw a news item “so as not to risk being touched by a crazy judge.

Then you see her doing thanks in

and you think that often whitening of the aforementioned ".

In any case, they clarify, these incidents are "anecdotal".

"We haven't had them for a long time."

what to laugh about

The creators of

They agree that there is no topic more delicate than another when it comes to approaching it with humor, but “if you make a satire about suffering, especially the vulnerable, it had better be funny and it had better be clear about the thesis.

They will call you everything, but if the work is good you have to give it the same”.

"Our mission is not to defend an argument or mediate between two extremes with a considered and thoughtful approach," they continue.

“It is impossible to do it rigorously from humor, which is a deformed and strident language by definition.

But if you are very clear that there is something that is not acceptable and you can think of a funny way to point it out, go ahead.

Some people are more talented than others when it comes to elegantly expressing harsh criticism.

We are usually very good at this, the recipe is to do it many times and honestly,

without seeking to provoke simply to attract attention, being a Kaffir.

But we are not going to position ourselves on all the debates that are trending on networks because it is not our job.

We are not columnists, thank God.

Let us also take into account that in the networks it is impossible for there to be debates, if we are strict with the term”.

One of the hallmarks of

has been to make humor about humor itself, or at least start from bases that require knowing a previous joke to catch the new one.

Lately, a text about Nachter has been very successful and supposedly signed by Nachter, which was, literally, a column by Jimina Sabadú published in EL PAÍS (Nachter has often been accused of copying its content).

Not long ago they also made humor about humor in another piece of news entitled “The perfect place?

This bar organizes micro-closed nights” in which it is reported that a

bar has decided to improve its offer by not allowing any comedian to go on stage.

The mechanisms of humor seem to interest a lot now: series like

explore the work of two comedians and Ricky Gervais's monologues are not only shredded in the stands, but their own content also analyzes how irony or offense works.

“It is very positive that comedians arouse hatred and passion, that their work is talked about, that there is interest in the profession and its mechanisms.

Let's see if in this way we move away from this condescension that we still perceive when certain individuals talk to us about what we do as if they were jokes that they, simply because of time –because they have a serious job–, cannot dedicate themselves to thinking.

It is good that there are comedians who believe they are gods, to see if they push up those who think they are trash and we reach an intermediate point,

where it is recognized that there are perhaps more important trades while being aware of how difficult it is to dedicate oneself to comedy, and that good comedy deserves the same prestige that good drama enjoys.

Or the novels of Albert Espinosa.

We only ask for that."

You can follow ICON on