Someone briefly made the Babylon Bee good
Also, a series of Chick Tract panels that make Catholics look cool as hell
If I’m not mistaken, this is the 50th edition of Modern Relics (not counting my placeholder post when I had COVID). Also next week will be the one-year anniversary of publishing weekly, with a small break over Christmas.
Next week I’ll do a self-indulgent reflection on what I’ve learned over the last year, so if you could please tell a friend about this newsletter and get them to read and sign up so I can brag about having lots of subscribers in that post, that would be great. Thanks!
Baby Ion Bee
You might recall when the Babylon Bee effectively banned itself from Twitter after making a transphobic joke. This week, an enterprising satirist pulled the oldest trick in the book and registered the handle @BabyIonBee and started posting on the Bee’s behalf. Yes, that’s Babylon with a capital I instead of a lower-case L.
What I find most interesting about this is it’s not a straight-up parody. While it’s clear the account owner is making fun of the original Babylon Bee, it’s almost like they’re doing it by making a genuine attempt to succeed where the real Bee had failed — doing conservative comedy that’s actually funny.
I had a hunch the account wouldn’t last very long, so I took screen shots of some of the best posts while I could. They would not have been out of place on the real Babylon Bee’s Twitter, except I actually laughed when I saw them on my feed.
It turns out I was right about Twitter’s moderators and the account was banned within days. It’s now been rebooted as @ACABylonBee, which is a more obvious parody/send up of the original, but it loses something without the veneer of sincerity @BabyIonBee had.
Munching on God
Thanks to Kali for sending me this Tumblr post.
It reminded me of this Tweet by @gayleviticus (posted with permission).
Thanks to Michael for posting this in the Modern Relics Discord
It has been pretty quiet in the Discord recently, and that’s really my fault for not keeping things fresh. But if you’d like to join and have a chat I’d love to get things going again!
A selection of Chick Tract panels that make Catholics look cool as hell
I used to include more Chick Tracts in this newsletter, but I eased off because they’re a bit confusing without context and I started to worry people might think I was posting them unironically.
Jack Chick was famously bigoted against Catholicism (especially Jesuits), but like many of his tracts, he goes so hard he actually comes full circle and makes it look cool. Several Jesuit priests have recently subscribed to this newsletter, so… I’m sorry/you’re welcome??
Finally, I think I’ve posted this one before but I love it so much I almost want to put it up in my study. It’s so melodramatic. Cinematic. Absurd, offensive, camp. And metal as hell.
Follow @No_Context_JTC if you haven’t already. I love it so much.
The noise I made when I saw this
