I am going to sound like a killjoy… but here it is : I think satiric websites like the Onion are aggravating the state of confusion in the world, it is a form of wrong speech made in the name of fun and wit.
I’m pretty sure someone will just read the first couple of lines and remember that story as true…
Ok, rant off 
Sad but true. I’ve had more than a few Onion articles passed to me as fact before. This one did afford me a few moments of amusement, though, so forgive me.
Funny, but I suppose the target audience need a liberal sprinkling of expletives (the article just below on robots and sex doesn’t help).
With metta
Hmm… I expect it’s actually lack of education, parochial politics, and fear. Satire has its place:
In the fragments that remain of their written correspondence, traders who traveled the same routes as the monk remarked upon how every time a person said something negative, the exasperating little shit would invariably chime in with unsolicited advice about how they just needed to accept their worries for what they were and learn to appreciate the present moment.
We’ve all met this person, sometimes in the mirror. It helps to laugh at the idiot before realizing it’s also a call to action in one’s own case; softens the blow, as it were. 