The Onion is on MySpace – and sums up the attitude of some newspapers to their online readers as sharply as ever with a message ‘To the MySpace user’:

“Though The Onion is loathe to allow our diseased readers direct contact with us, we have conceded to author this Inter-net article. Our perceived concern for the common man is purely illusion.”In reality, we have no interest other than as to serve as eyeballs that will hungrily pass over our advertisements. However, we must somehow justify our exorbitant advertising rates, and are therefore encouraging those in the young-ster MySpace demographic to look upon our website.

“Please distract yourself from the crushing class-system we promote by visiting our columnists on this time-wasting substitute for socializing, and, most importantly, peruse the electrical version of The Onion so we can continue gouging those who hawk their baubles and offensive t-shirts on our pages.

“As always, god-damn the lot of you.”