Editorial policy

Every article on MISTAKE is fiction. The events described have not happened, the quotes are invented, the institutions and figures inside a scenario are constructed for the story, and the dates are set in a future that has not arrived. We publish speculative, hypothetical scenarios about where existing trends could lead, not reports about where anything currently stands.

We do not publish invented events as fact anywhere on this site, in any format, including headlines, social posts and newsletter lines read in isolation. If a piece of our output could be mistaken for straight reporting once it is separated from the article around it, we treat that as our error rather than the reader's.

Real material and invented material are kept in visibly different places. The body of a story is the fiction. The Reality Behind the Joke block is the non-fiction: it names the actual trend the scenario was extrapolated from and points, in plain language, to the kind of evidence behind it, so a reader can go and verify it independently.

Where a story is built on real reporting, that reporting is flagged in that block rather than woven invisibly into the narrative. We do not fabricate statistics, studies, court rulings or official statements and present them as real, and we do not dress invented figures up as sourced data inside a scenario.

Public figures, organisations and companies appear in MISTAKE only as recognisable parts of the landscape a scenario takes place in. They are never the subject of invented compromising claims: no fabricated crimes, scandals, statements, health conditions, private conduct or financial misconduct attributed to any real person or real organisation.

Satire aimed at power is fair, and we do it. The target in that case is a decision, a policy, a business model or a direction of travel — things a reader can evaluate for themselves. Inventing damaging facts about identifiable people is not satire; it is defamation with a sense of humour attached.

No invented events presented as real. No fabricated quotes attributed to real, identifiable people. No hoaxes, forged documents, or content designed to be shared out of context as genuine news. No harassment of private individuals, and no scenarios that place a private person at the centre of the story at all.

We also decline scenarios that function as instructions rather than satire, material that targets groups for who they are rather than what they do, and stories whose only content is shock. A scenario has to be about a trend. If the trend is missing, there is nothing underneath the piece worth publishing.

Our fiction cannot be wrong, but our facts can be. If the Reality Behind the Joke block on a story misstates a real development, or a signal we point to turns out to be inaccurate or has since been superseded, we correct it on the page itself and note what changed and when. Corrections are not removed quietly.

If you are a person or an organisation mentioned in a story and you believe the treatment crosses the lines set out above, write to the editors at the contact address published on this site and say which story and which sentence. We read everything sent to us, we reply, and we would rather fix something early than defend it at length.