LOS ANGELES — Conservative news media outlets are in talks to revitalize an old fan-favorite scapegoat across their programming platforms. At a press conference today, Real American News, or RAN, announced plans to roll out an upcoming remake of their old “Video Games Cause Gun Violence” talking points.
“The past decade has been absolutely wild for us. Between ‘Fake News’ and QAnon, we’ve hardly had to argue against true, hard facts in order to fear monger. We’ve been able to just make stuff up and say whatever we want, with almost no pushback,” said news anchor Scott Flannery. “We’ve decided that it’s time to bring back some of our older, simpler talking points because it’s become too tough to keep all the misinformation straight.”
Many executives are hoping that an appeal to nostalgia will bring any lapsed viewers back into the fray.
“Everybody does remakes, so why shouldn’t we? They redid Ghostbusters twice already,” said head of programming Laurie Pepper. “Coming up with new things to scare our viewers costs money. People don’t like new. New is confusing, new requires learning. How many people do you know that just rewatch episodes of Friends that they’ve already seen a hundred times?
“We’re giving the people what they want, something they already know. Blaming gun violence on mental health hasn’t been working for us; there’s too much nuance. Blaming it on video games is easy: you shoot people in the game, so you do it for real, we send our thoughts and prayers and call it a day,” Pepper said while circling names on a list of interns she plans to harass today.
Real American News superfans in attendance were excited by this nostalgic return to form.
“It’s bringing me back to my childhood! I was in elementary school when RAN blamed Virginia Tech on Counter-Strike. Things were so much simpler then,” said obsessive news watcher Kyle Davis. “So many things are so complicated and scary now, it’ll be really nice to just have one thing to direct all my anger and hatred at, aside from minorities. The nostalgia is hype—oh, I hope they bring that lawyer, Jack Thompson, back!”
At press time, the Grand Theft Auto VI trailer was still being discussed on every conservative news station every sixty minutes since it was revealed online.
