Senior Discovers UTB Is Actually Satire

Alisa Masterman (C ‘18) learned about the importance of credible sources in her freshman writing seminar class three years ago. Unfortunately, she didn’t know how to put it into practice until more recently.

The communications major recently found out that UTB is, indeed, satire. Penn hasn’t gentrified the moon yet, and we don’t actually know where Australia is or if anyone from Australia even goes here.

“She would write really long and angry Facebook posts about ridiculous things,” her friends told an UTB reporter. “I remember one time there was an Under the Button article about Ben Franklin inventing weed. She wrote five paragraphs about ‘the blatant erasure of non-Western historical narratives.’ We always assumed she was joking, but after three years, we weren’t really sure.”

Multiple professors shared stories about Masterman bringing UTB articles into class for discussion, sometimes even citing them in her essays.

When interviewed, Masterman said that she felt “pretty embarrassed.” “In my defense, nobody ever told me. I’ve been trying to figure out what a capella group Young Thug’s a part of all year. There’s nothing even on the website that says that it’s satire either, is there?” (There is. It’s right by the publication date.)

Masterman is currently reevaluating all of the news sources that she frequents to make sure that they’re credible. When informed that ClickHole quizzes are not reliable indicators of personality, she declined to comment.