Clickhole, the website that Hogwarts Guidance Counselor comes from, is known as a satirical website that specifically parodies Buzzfeed in its quizzes, news stories, and other articles. The satirical goal of this particular “Clickventure” is to draw from the popularity of the Harry Potter series, similar to how a Buzzfeed quiz will draw in clicks from popular culture, and make the most ridiculous but somehow sensible story possible. It also challenges our everyday values. Flanagan and Nissenbaum describe values in the following way: “Values may take a variety of forms--qualities of the environment, personal traits, and political states. Values may be specific to individuals or shared by groups, and they may bind communities, cultures, religions, or nations. We acknowledge these differences by speaking of personal values, cultural values, religious values, human values, and so forth. We may further differentiate among types of values by talking of ethical, political, and aesthetic values and more. Finally, values are often ideals” (5). Clickhole as a whole focuses on absurdism, taking these values and making them into extreme situations to create satire. The website challenges these values in order to convey this absurdly sarcastic tone. Clickventures are a form of interactive electronic literature meant to carry over this theme and tone, with other titles such as You Got Hot. Can You Have Fun At Your 10-Year High School Reunion? and Acquire Frogs.

A recurring satirical theme in Hogwarts Guidance Counselor is futility, as your character is always unable to perform magic, safe for one almost always useless spell, and although you might have three different options for how to react to a situation, they are all sarcastic, all mean essentially the same thing, and all will take you down a similar path. This is not the case for every choice, just the small and insignificant choices, but they are meaningful in the commentary they provide, satirizing the futility and meaninglessness often associated with daily life. It has become common practice for movies, television, and books to focus on the blue collar worker who hates their life. Hogwarts Guidance Counselor takes this dread and parodies it by pushing it through endlessly absurd and extreme situations, justifiable only by the fact that the world it takes place in revolves around magic. Cards Against Humanity, the popularly irreverent and satirical card game, pulled a similar stunt as a 2016 Black Friday promotion, in which they raised thousands of dollars contributing towards digging a big useless hole: