So a couple of things. Just so ya know, when The Onion started in the late 1980's and early 1990's, it did not loudly announce itself as satire the way people view it now. Early print issues were laid out exactly like a local newspaper. Headlines were totaly deadpan. The tone was straight. It was put out on the street as if real. The prank was that it looked and read like real news.

People totally mistook it for real news before it was nationally known. Feel free to look up history of it. I know, cuz I was around that area when it first started getting legs. Confusion was part of the early appeal, and the point. The Onion became, and is now, “safe” and obviously satire only after years of people knowing the prank, not because it was born that way.

You're also wrongly assuming satire must: Be obviously humorous. Protect the reader from confusion. And/or reassure people that real news is still trustworthy

Satire doesn’t have to do that tho. Historically, a lot of satire has existed to destabilize certainty, def not to make people feel more comfortble. We're Twilight Zone/Black Mirror,/J.G. Ballard/early cyberpunk (before the game) journalism, not current era Onion listicle satire.

And let's not overlook the fact that tomorrow or the day after, or soon, many of my articles will no longer be fiction.

tl;dr: Explaining the joke, ruins the joke. I'm counting on fact that most people don't really read most replies either, but I won't be explaining myself ever again. :)