THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

Satire, especially political satire, in the US has had a very difficult time staying ahead of reality. Pity the poor satirist who believes he or she has hit the best note to mock a current foible only to find it has become reality before you could yours out there. This election is making that a real problem for one of America's popular satire organizations, The Onion.

Now that it’s almost over and we’re all thoroughly miserable, is there anything funny left to say about this dreadful election? Even the writers at the satirical website The Onion were struggling the other morning to come up with fresh avenues of amusement.

Lounging around the writers’ room, they listened to the editor in chief, Cole Bolton, read from a list of potential headlines they had submitted for consideration. Some of them were pretty funny – “Trump Tells Supporters Next Stop in Movement Is Buying Luxury Condos,” for instance, and “Clinton Vows Complete Transparency for Remaining 6 Days of Campaign” — but by the end of the meeting, only three out of 48 had been selected as worthy of turning into an item for the site. A kind of comic fatigue seemed to be setting in.

“We feel like we’ve passed every single stage of despair, hopelessness and rage,” Mr. Bolton said. “This last week is just us strafing to find new angles, to put into words how horrible this experience has been.”

The nominees, Donald J. Trump and Hillary Clinton, already seem like walking parodies of themselves, and the rhetoric has been so hyperbolic and apocalyptic as to be virtually beyond satire.

“It’s hard to turn up the volume when the speaker is already blown out and everyone’s ears are already bleeding,” the managing editor, Ben Berkley, said.

Another complication is the competition from social media. In today’s Twitter instaworld, everybody’s a comedian. The Onion tries to cut through the cacophony by finding original jokes and creating what Mr. Bolton called “a strange alternative world” in which familiar people are assigned new personae.

With social media bringing the good, the bad and the ugly right to your phone instantly, the competition is rough and the thin line between Onionistas and reality gives them no wiggle room at all. There is no longer any idea too outrageous.