Normally, when Snopes fact checks satire sites, it’s kind of ridiculous and fun to laugh at. This time, however, Snopes went further than just fact-checking an article.

Once again, Snopes has thrown its super sleuths into action and made sure that the American public wasn’t at all fooled by those dastardly Republicans and their nefarious sense of humor. This time the site wanted to squash a claim when The Bee decided to make fun of Georgia State Rep. Erica Thomas, who was recently in a bit of a controversy for claiming someone had told her to go back to her country in an altercation at a Publix, but later was found out to have been lying. Thomas even admitted as such.

In true form, the Bee wrote a satirical article about the adventures of Thomas.

The article was headlined “Georgia Lawmaker Claims Chick-Fil-A Employee Told Her To Go Back To Her Country, Later Clarifies He Actually Said ‘My Pleasure’,” and describes a similar incident to the one Thomas claimed to have encountered in the Publix, only with a funnier spin:

Georgia state rep Erica Thomas took to social media this weekend to express her disgust and outrage at a Chick-fil-A employee’s comments to her in the restaurant’s drive-thru. According to her viral Twitter post, the black state worker claims that after saying thank you for her food, the white cashier pointed his finger at her and angrily shouted, “Go back to your country!”

The Bee wrote that after Chick-fil-A did some investigating, it found out that Thomas’s claim was a total lie, including what was actually said to her and the race of the person saying it.

Clearly a comedic take on the absurdity of Thomas’s actions mixed with the meme that is Chick-fil-A’s kindness.

But Snopes doesn’t seem to understand how humor works or why it’s even a thing in the first place. Their “fact-check” article begins with one of the most elitist and stuffy subtitles I’ve ever seen on an article.

“We’re not sure if fanning the flames of controversy and muddying the details of a news story classify an article as “satire.”,” writes Snopes author Dan Evon.

Evon rated the Bee’s story as “False”…because…well, yeah.

Evon then says that the satirical website has fooled people in the past and lists a number of links to those who have been fooled by this post by the Bee in particular, forgetting half the fun of satirical sites are writing humorous fiction that drifts close enough to reality that it becomes a distorted mirror of it.

Snopes ends with making sure everyone is clear about what is real and what isn’t:

Since the line between fact and fiction here is a bit blurry, let’s quickly summarize what’s true and what’s false in regards to the lawmaker controversy:

What’s true: Georgia state Rep. Erica Thomas claimed that she was verbally assaulted by a man at a Publix store who told her to “go back” where she came from. The man admitted that he cursed at Thomas, but he denied making the “go back” remark.

What’s false: In the fictional Babylon story, the event took place at a Chick-fil-A and involved an employee, not a fellow customer.

Well, let’s all thank Snopes for doing the Lord’s work and making sure that we all know that fake comedic websites make fake comedic stories.

However, the part that makes this particular “fact-check” from Snopes really bad is the fact that they assign malicious motives to the Bee for releasing this story. Instead of taking this as a light-hearted effort to make humorous something serious — as is the Bee’s job to do — Snopes makes it seem as the Bee was doing this to intentionally spread deceit and ruin someone. Evon even takes a swipe at Chick-fil-A for no particular reason.

Babylon Bee founder Adam Ford lays this out superbly in a series of tweets.

Next: The third paragraph … this paragraph! Just look at it!

An "apparent attempt to maximize the online indignation"? What a subjective and malicious statement!

This is a "fact check"?

/6 pic.twitter.com/WSLWlTdoWC

— Adam Ford (@Adam4d) July 25, 2019

Also, imagine the type of ideological bubble one must live in to think that what Chick-fil-A is "known for" is "its CEO’s opposition to same-sex marriage." It's the most beloved fast-food chain in the country!

This is a "fact check"?

/8

— Adam Ford (@Adam4d) July 25, 2019

Onward:

Now this sentence is quite troubling. Describing the Bee article as a "ruse."

Let me define "ruse" for you: "an action intended to deceive someone."

Now that's an accusation.

/10 pic.twitter.com/LPic2QeN32

— Adam Ford (@Adam4d) July 25, 2019

Interestingly, Snopes does not assign motive to articles that come from other satirical sites like The Onion.

They've ascribed dark motives to the Bee while laughing off Onion fact-checks like HAHAA GUYS, "of course" it's satire! OF COURSE! Some readers just got confused, y'know!

/14 pic.twitter.com/OJGMPcqGM6

— Adam Ford (@Adam4d) July 25, 2019

Snopes has been proven to be a left-leaning site, even going so far as to blatantly lie about some of its “facts” if it helps damage the right at all.

This time, however, Snopes didn’t just stop at lying about the facts. It assigned villainous motive to the Bee for a satirical article about a Democrat. For a site that is supposed to just deal in the facts, saying that a site had malicious intent to purposefully convince everyone that a lie was true is far beyond what its professed goal is supposed to be.

Seeing as how Snopes bills itself as a safe haven for the facts and nothing but the facts, this article is essentially claiming that it’s a solid fact that the people who write at the Babylon Bee are bad people with ill intent.

I hate to sound cliche, but I don’t just rate Snope’s “fact-check” here as false, but the entire self-professed reason for Snopes’s existence to be false.