Seems like it's still not theirs until a judge signs off on it.
That sale was scuttled by a bankruptcy court. Now, The Onion has re-emerged with a new plan: licensing the website from Gregory Milligan, the court-appointed manager of the site.
On Monday, Mr. Milligan asked Maya Guerra Gamble, a judge in Texas’s Travis County District Court overseeing the disposition of Infowars, to approve that licensing agreement in a court filing. Under the terms, The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron, would pay $81,000 a month to license Infowars.com and its associated intellectual property — such as its name — for an initial six months, with an option to renew for another six months.
The licensing deal has been agreed to by The Onion and the court-appointed administrator. But it is not effective until Judge Gamble approves it, and Mr. Jones could appeal any ruling. That means the fate of Infowars remains in limbo until the court rules, probably sometime in the next two weeks. Mr. Jones continues to operate Infowars.com and host its weekday program, “The Alex Jones Show.”
I saw OP and went to infowars dot com to have a look. I scrolled a bit, clicked some links, looked at the store, had a good laugh at the comedy of this ironic site.
Now you’re telling me the site is not a joke from The Onion? Reality is stranger than fiction.
I appreciate this story appears to be all about the rage-bate headlines, but I don't believe that either six-week old babies say "Mama" (with purpose) or that a baby that age would be capable of responding in the way described to an adult saying "there is no Mama". It doesn't work like that at that age.
Edit: but it is likely the baby is older than 6 weeks in that video - this seems to be the source of confusion (read carefully - the 6-week-old video was a different, older video):
In December, when Texson was 6 weeks old, he shared a video with the text overlay “6 week old homophobic baby,” which was viewed more than 36 million times. In that video, Texson smiles in response to being told he has a sister, a brother and puppies but frowns when McAnally says that he has two dads. In the most recent video McAnally has shared, Texson laughs and says the sound “ma ma ma,” when asked if he wants “dada or pop.” Later on, in the video, he cries and looks frustrated." - https://www.newsweek.com/entertainment/shane-mcanally-video-...
Of course, getting stuck on if they got the age of the baby wrong is throwing out the baby with the bathwater - the main thrust of the story is true.
> In that video, Texson smiles in response to being told he has a sister, a brother and puppies but frowns when McAnally says that he has two dads
[Apologies for being somewhat absolutist about this, but...] babies do not (typically) understand the literal meaning of words - or indeed understand language generally - at 6 weeks. They may understand tone, but not words.
Again, rage bait headlines and all that.
> Of course, getting stuck on if they got the age of the baby wrong
Was hoping to provide useful data for any readers who may be here to "gratify their intellectual curiosity"* that certain claims referenced in this thread are ... implausible ... and that's putting it mildly.
"6-Week-Old" babies don't have the muscle strength to hold their heads horizontally like that (and IMHO it would be foolhardy to wave them around like that)...
Pronounced social smiling (as in the video) already by six weeks would also pretty unusual.
Hah yes, many years I got into a debate with someone here or was it Reddit about the "intuitiveness of iOS" and someone claiming "I've handed my iPad to my 3 month old and they are able to swipe and navigate"...
No, your baby typically needs to be propped up to sit at that age. They simply don't have that fine motor control and coordination, let alone the comprehension of whatever app you put in front of them.
My 7-month old likes to play with my android watch. It's locked so she just futzes with the lock screen. But she doesn't know how to swipe or navigate, she just likes that it's shiny and does something interesting when she touches is.
That said, for me, having only ever used android phones, I always find myself wondering "how do you go back" when I help my mom with her iPhone. No back button! So I guess I'm not as intuitive as a 3 month old on reddit :)
I'm not sure what point you're making but there's nothing satirical about the second headline. The UK really did just legislate to decriminalise abortion up to the point of birth.
TLDR: not legalised in the wider sense that any doctors or institutions involved with the abortion can perform the abortion until arbitrary late, but DOES remove liability from the pregnant women. So in case her abortion is aided or abetted those people are still criminally liable, but if she does it on her own somehow, then it is in fact legalised by the recent change. So, it depends on the situation, and if the mother is the sole actor or not. If she is the sole actor, it seems abortion has been arbitrarily legalized according to kuerbels' link. This also makes it important that people like kuerbel disseminate such a correction: the platitude that all abortions are now legalized would send the wrong message / legal advice to any accomplices in the abortion, even if the mother can do this with impunity, if you aid or abet her in it you can be held liable!
> So in case her abortion is aided or abetted those people are still criminally liable, but if she does it on her own somehow, then it is in fact legalised by the recent change. So, it depends on the situation, and if the mother is the sole actor or not.
Wheter acting solo or with aid of others, the mother is no longer liable for criminal charges. Full Stop.
See, much better articles that address the actual ammended bill and passing into law rather than focussing on the confusion spread by various media sources.
This is a change that would have impacted a total of 20 woman in the entire 100 years of the 19th Century and almost the same number of woman from the last two decades.
> Trump Responds To Controversial Image Of Himself As Jesus, Says It Actually Depicted Him As A Doctor & Slams “Fake News” For The Misinterpretation
Had I not already heard this story via the mainstream media on this side of the Atlantic, this could easily be another satirical headline. With Trump as President, Poe’s law now covers reporting on facts – not just expressions of opinion.
Previously, they were trying to buy the assets outright. That got into the "one group of families is owned $1.4 billion and another is owned $50 million" and the "how do you maximize the returns from Alex Jones assets to satisfy those claims?"
This is using a different structure.
> On Monday, Mr. Milligan asked Maya Guerra Gamble, a judge in Texas’s Travis County District Court overseeing the disposition of Infowars, to approve that licensing agreement in a court filing. Under the terms, The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron, would pay $81,000 a month to license Infowars.com and its associated intellectual property — such as its name — for an initial six months, with an option to renew for another six months.
They're not buying it - they're licensing it from the victims families instead.
Consider the fact this is a satirical news website; a fictional CEO; an imaginary corporation; and it literally proposes a vision of "Not just ads, but scams! Not just scams, but lies with no object [...] A digital platform where, every day, visitors sacrifice themselves at altars of delusion and misery"
I think it's a good PR move. "Hey, look at how reasonable we've been in spite of the legal craziness. We've put money on the table and are moving forward with a plan that benefits everyone." Now anyone who blocks the plan will be seen as the problem.
Misinformation is funny now! This is all part of the joke- they were a funny fake news site that bought an unfunny fake news site, now their fake news doesn't need to be funny and that's what makes it funny.
> Tim Heidecker, one of the comedians behind “Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!” on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim, has been hired to serve as “creative director of Infowars.” He said he initially plans to parody Mr. Jones’s “whole modus operandi.”
> Mr. Heidecker has been working on his impression of Mr. Jones. But eventually, when that joke gets old, Mr. Heidecker said that he hoped to turn Infowars into a destination for independent and experimental comedy.
> “I just thought it would be just a beautiful joke if we could take this pretty toxic, negative, destructive force of Infowars and rebrand it as this beautiful place for our creativity,” Mr. Heidecker said in an interview.
My favorite recent thing from Tim Heidecker was him interviewing Fred Armisen in the style of Bill Maher. The parody is uncanny. I could see him doing a really good Alex Jones.
I think it's better if they keep all the URLs as they are right now, but then add misinformation into each page and put a big banner saying that this site is parody. Then search and AI will index this and then it will another lawsuit from Alex Jones to get the information removed from those alternate sources.
His brand of comedy is very hit-or-miss for me (the best way I can describe it is "smug"), but context drives me to wish him luck in his presumed efforts to turn InfoWars into a literal joke instead of just a figurative one.
The two aren't mutually exclusive. Neutral third party Gemini T. Google, what say you?
Tim and Eric's Title Explained
By calling the show "Awesome" and "Great" before the viewer has even seen it, Tim and Eric lean into a persona of unearned confidence.
I can see that - kind of like Will Ferrell has reflected on playing dumb people who are extremely confident. So I feel smug does slot in there but I don't feel like it defines it.
So they are now setting the content on infowars.com? Honestly, I can't tell since everything on that site looks so fake it isn't believable. The onion transition may be hard to detect.
Assuming that the announcement video Ben Collins posted represents the new logo, it's a delightfully pride rainbow-colored InfoWars logo with an onion in place of the 'o'.
I visited with my family in rural Missouri recently. Alex Jones and InfoWars is gospel to them. I was amazed at how many times cited him as an authority on various topics. I thought they were joking, but apparently, Obama made a promise with his father before his passing that he would destroy the United States. Oh, and of course, Obama is Satan, and Trump was sent by God to protect us all. Of course.
It's your duty as a Hacker News to subtly introduce the Free Software Foundation and/or GNU into a conversation with them.
When they ask about it, throw a bunch of breathless praise on Stallman hacking the laser printer, building an OS from scratch, predicting DRM, fighting against cellphone surveillance, etc.
Tell them you'll send them a link. Then link them to the Alex Jones interview with Richard Stallman. (It's a pretty good interview, btw.)
It's like hiding broccoli in a chocolate bar they were going to eat anyway.
Despite the article, infowars.com at least doesn't really seem to be run by The Onion yet? But I'm looking at that site for the first time so I have no idea.
> “The goal for the families we represent has always been to prevent Alex Jones from being able to cause harm at scale, the way he did against them,” said Chris Mattei, the lawyer who argued the Connecticut families’ case in court. The deal with The Onion promises “to significantly degrade his power to do that.”
> The Onion also plans to sell merchandise and share the proceeds with the Sandy Hook families.
I reallyyyyy want a gay frogs t-shirt, I would wear the hell out of that. That entire rant and meme it spawned is the only good thing to come out of that man
>With this new InfoWars, we will democratize psychological torture, welcoming brutal and sadistic ideas from everyone, even the very stupidest among us. It will be like the Manhattan Project, only instead of a bomb, we will be building a website.
I looked it up and was not surprised to see the rabid ramblings of a tech bro psychopath (but I repeat myself) with a drug addiction who gleefully admitted to wanting to hunt down Palantir's detractors with AI drones used to spray them with fentanyl-laced urine.
It was barely funny when I read the headline a few years ago. Really weird story, I guess I just don't understand the humor at all. I'd rather stop hearing about InfoWars entirely.
Bear in mind buying it to ruin it is a very real public service. Alex Jones was hoping a conservative ally would buy it and then just continue to let him do what he wants.
Jokes aside, The Onion is basically spending a giant pile of money to burn the website down.
I remember when The KLF burned a million quid. They were being internally consistent. It was artistically relevant.
Most people thought they were insane. Bill Drummond wrote about how it strained his relationship with his kids. You can tell that he regrets it.
Personally I think a million bucks to lease a domain name for a year is a really terrible business decision. You might be able to argue that it's going to victims but you could almost certainly just park that money into an interest-bearing account and do better for those victims.
But it's also been obvious from the beginning (starting with Jones' own comments) that nobody really gives a shit about these families and they're just props in other peoples' theater show.
The cost seems really high. On the other hand I thought bringing the Onion back as a print comedy newspaper was insane too, so possibly they know things I don’t. There is a business plan here, even if it’s a dumb one.
I get the impression that beyond the money from the sale, the victims would very much like Alex Jones control of InfoWars to end. This accomplishes both of those things. I don't generally find The Onion that funny, and probably will never visit the new InfoWars, but I'm eternally grateful that they were willing to step in and do this. Because someone had to. A "good business decision" is to let Alex run his show if you buy the brand, but that's still a win for him.
Not only would another owner likely allow Alex Jones to continue to operate, but The Onion can truly salt the earth around Alex Jones' business. If they own the InfoWars trademarks... if they own The Alex Jones Show as a trademark? They can potentially shut down Alex Jones' future works if they violate InfoWars' trademarks and intellectual property. They can sue him if he says something defamatory about the new InfoWars. One of the perks here is that The Onion is well-versed in free speech rights, intellectual property rights, and trademark law. They already have lawyers good at this stuff.
The Onion can be a truly significant thorn in Jones' side, the way most other outcomes for this could not. I'm guessing the new site won't be that funny, but thankfully I don't really care about the "art".
"If Infowars' brand and property are sold, Jones could still start a new company or work for someone else. But because the bankruptcy judge ruled Jones' behavior "willful and malicious," the bankruptcy will not erase Jones' debt, meaning families can keep claiming any money he makes in the future until he pays the $1.3 billion he owes them."
Take some time to see how bankruptcy works. You cannot take all of someones property, nor can you take all of their paycheck. There are specific limits. You can also still come to an alternate settlement with your creditors.
This idea that he "can't have toys" or the court is "going to take is cat" because he has debts is insanity.
Let's say it's your family member. And they go bankrupt due to medical bills. Is this how you want the system to treat them? Justice isn't an opportunity to demean people you don't like.
People will tolerate all kinds of bad precedent and injustice simply because of their emotions. Which might be fine, but to see it drizzle onto the front page of Hacker News, I have to agree with the OP, is annoying.
Woo hoo, sounds like some of their jokes landed and you just couldn't take it. Do you only appreciate humor if it's punching down?
Do you have any funny jokes about the children who were "killed" at Sandy Hook or the crisis actors who pretended to be their parents and mourn for them that you want to share with the class?
Ok so they feel strongly about gun violence, where's the humorous part here? It's a pretty funny headline being used the first time, maybe they were better in 2014.
Satire doesn't always have to be "ha ha" funny. They've got plenty of that material.
As mass shootings became more and more common as a news satire site they felt that they couldn't continue to keep their heads in the sand and needed to write something about it. They couldn't continue to not write something about the news, and yet they felt they had to write something. Jimmy Kimmel is often Ha Ha funny... and yet https://youtu.be/ruYeBXudsdshttps://youtu.be/sB0wWEFIr50https://youtu.be/Z0vLiQLpsc8
When you make jokes about the news, sometimes you have to write about the not ha ha funny, but rather the tragic news instead. This is how The Onion has addressed it.
> And as mass shootings increasingly became a tragic and appalling feature of the Obama era, it also became a subject that The Onion could not avoid covering all too routinely. “As more and more shootings happened, it became something that—as an organization that comments on the news—we couldn’t not write stories about…and it kept on growing and growing and growing to the point where [the problem of gun violence] just seemed overwhelming.”
Can someone put me to speed on it?
Who is the onion? Who is info wars? What is happening?
I can't comprehend but it feels that I cannot really Google for it
The Onion is a long standing satirical news site. They run crazy stories intended to make readers laugh. Infowars was a disinformation/conspiracy site that ran crazy headlines to outrage their audience. The owner of Infowars was sued into oblivion for saying the Sandy Hook school shooting was faked as a pretense to pass gun control. So now crazy conspiracy site is sold to satire site to help pay off the massive judgment against them. Basically a merger of the two fakest news sites on the Internet except now we can all just laugh.
> Such is the InfoWars I envision: An infinite virtual surface teeming with ads. Not just ads, but scams! Not just scams, but lies with no object, free radical misinformation, sentences and images so poorly thought out that they are unhealthy even to view for just a few seconds.
In any age where Polymarket didn't already exist, we'd have called this satire.
It's still not as bad as the actual InfoWars, which if I recall was selling "Alex Jones Natural" supplements, which were mostly just stuff like regular iodine tablets with a massive market and a cool name like "Survival Shield X-2."
I hope they invite the knowledge fight guys, a couple of podcasters who mock and debunk infowars, down to film a show in the infowars studio. They helped the sandy hook families legal with their case and are generally awesome guys.
Please can someone correct my opinion on this because I'm sure I'm missing something.
I find it crazy that in the US you can't take an opinion on something without risking being bankrupted because that thing you said is later proven untrue and that it hurt someone's feelings – feeling which in the US have a monetary value of billions apparently.
I agree that the media should be evidence based and it's bad when the media is presenting things which are clearly false, but I also think that sometimes the evidence is misleading and speculation can be useful to get to the truth.
Surely cases like this show that it's simply far too dangerous to report on something in the US which might both upset people and could later proven to be false?
We have a similar issue in the UK where even when it's widely understood that someone is abusing kids, if they're famous our media basically can't say anything because they'll risk being sued. While our law is well intentioned, it seems that it really just suppresses the free exchange of information which has repeatedly led to harms against children. The speculation while often harmful is sometimes useful.
I just feel like there's a middle ground here. Maybe you can sue, but perhaps your feelings are only worth a few hundred thousand pounds? I get the US is much richer than the UK but being sued for billions for being wrong and hurting peoples feelings just seems insane. And I agree Jones was completely wrong to have said what he said.
Why am I wrong on this? I hate holding this opinion and would like it changed.
Yes, your understanding is not aligned with the facts of the case. This was not close to an unfair abridgement of Mr. Jones's rights.
Timeline:
1. Alex Jones hosts guests on his show questioning if a mass school shooting was a falsified event.
2. The controversy drove a massive increase in traffic to his videos.
3. This encouraged Mr. Jones to host additional guests who made direct claims that parents of the slain children were actors hired by the US government.
4. Those parents received intense harassment and death threats. Many had to move away from their homes.
5. The parents sent many requests to the Infowars show asking Mr. Jones to stop claiming they were actors; Infowars did not stop.
6. The parents sued.
7. Infowars failed to comply with standard evidence discovery requests.
8. After many attempts by the court to achieve compliance, the plaintiffs moved for a default judgement. The court accepted.
9. At the award hearing, plaintiffs provided evidence that Mr. Jones moved assets out of Infowars to a company owned by his parents specifically to evade paying the judgment.
10. The jury at the award hearing awarded the plaintiffs about $1B in damages. Rationale was to discourage Mr. Jones from continuing to libel family members impacted by mass shootings.
The award hearing was exceptionally dramatic and theatrical. The defense was repeatedly caught in lies and accidentally sent evidence to the plaintiff's lawyer, revealing Mr. Jones's perjury.
Let's not ignore the fact that Jones's lawyers also completely messed up the discovery process by providing the prosecution with everything, including correspondence they had with Jones essentially admitting everything.
The prosecution even told them that they had completely fucked up and did they intend to send everything, and the defense said "Yes". Then when these messages were brought up in court, the defense tried to say that they couldn't be allowed because they were private correspondence between them and their client. To which the prosecution supplied their conversation with the defense showing that tried to make them aware and gave them a chance to correct their error.
The key element you’re missing is that the lawsuit accused Alex Jones of knowing that he was lying. I.e., it’s not that he was speculating — it’s that he knew he wasn’t telling the truth.
To quote Jones:
“We’ve clearly got people where it’s actors playing different parts of different people. I’ve looked at it and undoubtedly there’s a cover-up, there’s actors, they’re manipulating, they’ve been caught lying and they were pre-planning before it and rolled out with it.”
That isn’t even phrased as a “what if” — it’s asserting that Sandy Hook was staged. It’s framed as a truth, not a possibility, and the jury found that Alex Jones knew it wasn’t true when he was saying it.
Why so large? A few reasons. First, this was for 26 families, so a substantial number of people. Second, we’re not just talking emotional damages — we’re talking harassment that these folks received as a result of Jones’ lies. Third, a big chunk of the damages were punitive. Alex Jones has a history of lying to expand his audience, recklessly ignoring the effects of those lies. A judge decided that the verdict needed to be big enough to discourage Jones from continuing to lie.
> That isn’t even phrased as a “what if” — it’s asserting that Sandy Hook was staged. It’s framed as a truth, not a possibility, and the jury found that Alex Jones knew it wasn’t true when he was saying it.
I think the deliberate maliciousness of it should bare more punishment, but I still think $1B is extremely unreasonable.
It's also absurd to me that a judge should have the right to make up an arbitrarily big number as a means to inflect a secondary punishment. $1 million is discouragement, $1 billion is an attempt to destroy the business and his life. While I have no sympathy for Jones, I still find this problematic if what you're saying is true.
They have the ability to determine punitive damages within guidelines (many states have caps, for example), and if the defendant feels the damages are unreasonable they have every right to appeal to a higher court. Eventually the Supreme Court may make an unappealable decision, but the appeals process has to stop somewhere.
And at some point society needs a way to tell people who ignore lesser consequences that they don't get to participate in that society any more. In this case I think Alex Jones crossed enough malicious lines to deserve it; he's in bad shape because he's the kind of person who accuses school shooting survivors of fraud even though he knew he wasn't true! He had every chance in the world to back off and apologize, but he didn't. He tried to avoid facing judgement by hiding behind bankruptcy. He is a very bad human being.
Now, is that always the case for this kind of judgement? Nope, sometimes the system fails. Some people would say Gawker is an example of that failure. I am not totally sure about that one, but even if it is... I'm reluctant to toss out an entire system unless it's a systemic problem. And Alex Jones experiencing consequences for lying for profit does not seem, to me, to be evidence of a systemic problem.
Thank you for engaging with me in good faith and helping me understand your perspective.
> And at some point society needs a way to tell people who ignore lesser consequences that they don't get to participate in that society any more. In this case I think Alex Jones crossed enough malicious lines to deserve it; he's in bad shape because he's the kind of person who accuses school shooting survivors of fraud even though he knew he wasn't true! He had every chance in the world to back off and apologize, but he didn't. He tried to avoid facing judgement by hiding behind bankruptcy. He is a very bad human being.
I do agree that he deserved to be punished, and it's interesting because I also agree he deserved it.
I suspect it's because I'm wired extremely libertarian that I don't agree with the $1b damages judgement.
Fundamentally I don't like a system which has the power to make you pay $1b because you lied and hurt people. Even though I acknowledge these things are bad I think are deserving of punishment.
Maybe a good analogy is kids on motorbikes – motorbikes are deathtraps and anyone who allows their kid to ride on a motorbike without deserves to have their head kicked in. But no more what stats I cite for whatever reason it's one of those things where people just say, "don't care, I should be allowed to do that even if I'm risking killing my kid". I'm kinda like that with everything. I don't know why. I don't choose it, I just seem to prefer liberty at the cost of harm in almost all cases.
A just society would be free to take care of individuals like Alex Jones in whatever why they see fit.
Depp v. Heard is another famous US libel case, but more controversial. They ruled that Heard made false claims (not just speculation) that harmed Depp's career, and she intended for it to hurt his reputation. Alex Jones met similar criteria except much worse.
True though, you could be held liable if you used what you thought was real evidence to ruin someone's reputation, only to find out that it's false. I think it's on you to be careful of that.
The tik-tok psychic defamation case would likely be better comparison (which is on par with Depp v. Heard). She defamed an innocent college professor about committing murder based on tarot card readings and continued to do so after the actual murder was convicted and receiving cease and desist letters.
An opinion would be something like "I think it's good that those kids were shot".
You could say that all day and people would not like you, but no one could do anything about it.
What Alex Jones did was deny reality. He suggested that the victims did not exist. He suggested the event did not happen and the grieving parents were government-hired actors. He riled up his listeners and effectively sent them after people. He did this in spite of knowing what he was saying on his show was not true. That was a large part of things, that Alex Jones was aware he was spreading misinformation.
Let's not pretend Alex Jones was doing was voicing a "difference of opinion".
> What Alex Jones did was deny reality. He suggested that the victims did not exist. He suggested the event did not happen and the grieving parents were government-hired actors. He riled up his listeners and effectively sent them after people. He did this in spite of knowing what he was saying on his show was not true. That was a large part of things, that Alex Jones was aware he was spreading misinformation.
> Let's not pretend Alex Jones was doing was voicing a "difference of opinion".
I agree. I'm disagreeing purely on whether $1 billion is a reasonable fine for deliberately lying. Not on whether he is guilty.
What do you feel would be an appropriate punishment?
You've done a lot of whinging about how you feel the $1B is too much but that you do feel Alex Jones should be punished. Try staking out a position on what you think should happen instead of this continual "yes but not that" mess.
Honestly, I'm not sure about the $1B number, but it needed to at the very least be the amount he made from slandering them on InfoWars, otherwise he'd still have profited off it. That would probably bankrupt him either way.
I think with Alex Jones in particular it's that people knew he had money, and so they wanted a piece of it. If you're a nobody and you say false things no one cares really. Look at all the randos on X spouting nonsense without repercussions. It didn't help that these people in power don't like him.
It's dangerous to say false things and have a lot of money. People in power will use it as an excuse to take your money away, unless you're allied with them, of course.
> It's dangerous to say false things and have a lot of money.
Correction: As someone who has developed themselves as a media personality, it's dangerous to say false things, particularly if the saying of false things is explicitly intended to enrich themselves further as a media personality, and they're aware of the falseness of what they're saying.
When you add in the rest of the details the outcome starts to make a lot of sense!
Thank you, Tetrahedron - you are the best possible end for that nasty site.
Between this takeover, and Trump’s BRUTAL takedown of AJ a few days ago, karma seems to be catching up with that shit peddling, abusive bottom-feeder scum that is AJ.
Here is to them eating each other, and choking on it.
The Onion and Mr Beast are the highbrow and lowbrow versions of the same niche: absurdism, spectacle and indifference without staying power. Since there's such low retention, the content must be weighted to constant new conversions and new reconversions.
Edit: if you have the time, watch their youtube series Sex House, Helcomb County Municipal Lake Dredge Appraisals and Dr. Good (approx 75 minutes each). There's no nudity, gore or cursing, just some very clever themes about the parallels between television and hell that are still relevant right now, if not more so.
This is likely because The Onion was purchased by Univision in 2016 and then bounced around in a couple more acquisitions over the next decade. Ben Collins got the helm in 2024 and has been doing, in my opinion, a fantastic job with the brand.
When I worked at an ISP we had a lot of landline phone customers too and I'm sure they will continue to for a long time.
At least as long as their current customers keep breathing.
You can run a business off inertia/nostalgia for quite a long time.
People are confused about what I said. Success and Relevance are not the same thing. National Lampoon still has a business too, but I doubt that any of you have seen a new movie of theirs since Van Wilder/Repli-Kate came out in 2002.
A million dollars a year for a domain name is quite a lot. And I know what was paid for the sales of some big (in the keyword marketing/leadgen space) domain names...Sale, not lease.
> You can run a business off inertia/nostalgia for quite a long time.
They only reintroduced print editions in 2024 after an 11 year break. Those 65,000 print subscribers are all people who decided they wanted to start paying money for The Onion in the last 2 years.
If "people are confused" I think it's because you are rejecting empirical evidence that The Onion is relevant without offering any counter-evidence of your own. Is it possible it's just no longer relevant to you personally? (I myself am a proud print subscriber...)
Inertia doesn't really seem like it would lead to 300% YoY growth...
OTOH, National Lampoon hasn't put out a magazine since 1998 or a film since 2015 (and that was a retrospective on the magazine).
I guess I'd agree that, in absolute terms, The Onion might be less of a cultural force than it was in 2005 (say), but part of that has to be that culture is a lot more long-tailed: music, movies, and TV aren't dominated by a handful of works either.
You say "without staying power" but I still remember and frequently cite these ancient Onion article headlines:
- Drugs now legal if user is gainfully employed
- Top 10 Genocides of the 20th Century (Infographic)
- Cycle of Abuse Running Smoothly
I mean sure, it's a satirical news site and it's got a constant stream of new content, much of which is forgettable. But that's true of every other news site too. The gems make it stick.
No offense, but the humor of it has gone right over your head. Building an InfoWars clone isn't nearly as funny as acquiring the real one just to mock it.
I guess.. But renting a 4th reich site seems far darker than they might be used to and likely to make them the butt of the joke when Hitler's testtube clone gets elected from it in 35 years.
Exactly. Buying would at least mean you aren't revamping the value of the site for some next renter in a deeply cynical age where making fun of the orange pedo at a press club ball could cause WWIII.
Reanimating a corpse that was killed under suspicious circumstances, all while milking value out of a name someone else developed and cultivated for years. Frankenstein's monster wearing a skin-suit. I don't see the money in this outside of the freakshow factor. Everybody loves a freak show, but who wants to live there?
It is growing and containing its messaging that has been going on for over a decade about gun violence.
From the article:
> But on the topic of gun control and gun violence, it is a political issue that Onion staffers clearly, perhaps even deeply, care about.
> Joe Garden, a former Onion writer and features editor who started working at the publication in the ’90s and left in 2012, told The Daily Beast that while most of the editorial staff tended to lean reliably liberal, their political satire was governed by being “against things that we thought were stupid.”
> And as mass shootings increasingly became a tragic and appalling feature of the Obama era, it also became a subject that The Onion could not avoid covering all too routinely.
“As more and more shootings happened, it became something that—as an organization that comments on the news—we couldn’t not write stories about…and it kept on growing and growing and growing to the point where [the problem of gun violence] just seemed overwhelming.”
> “Any mass shooting is horrible, but when they just start happening just a few months [apart], it’s mind-boggling,” Garden continued. “And it’s terrifying that so little has been done about it.”
This is very much in continuing that messaging and mission in the way that they know how.
Maybe it's just me but I don't see much humor in this. His brand and assets may have been liquidated, but he's still doing his show and it remains popular. The only people who really won in this saga are, as usual, the lawyers.
The reason InfoWars is being sold is because of the bankruptcy proceedings. This is money owed to Sandy Hook families [1], who were the target of the harmful conspiracy theories that caused them further pain and suffering.
> “The goal for the families we represent has always been to prevent Alex Jones from being able to cause harm at scale, the way he did against them,” said Chris Mattei, the lawyer who argued the Connecticut families’ case in court. The deal with The Onion promises “to significantly degrade his power to do that.”
But the deal doesn't do that. Alex Jones has other websites where he's spewing his nonsense and hawking his merch. Maybe it feels good to get his major brand name, but it is largely inconsequential in limiting his reach.
Seems like it's still not theirs until a judge signs off on it.
That sale was scuttled by a bankruptcy court. Now, The Onion has re-emerged with a new plan: licensing the website from Gregory Milligan, the court-appointed manager of the site.
On Monday, Mr. Milligan asked Maya Guerra Gamble, a judge in Texas’s Travis County District Court overseeing the disposition of Infowars, to approve that licensing agreement in a court filing. Under the terms, The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron, would pay $81,000 a month to license Infowars.com and its associated intellectual property — such as its name — for an initial six months, with an option to renew for another six months.
The licensing deal has been agreed to by The Onion and the court-appointed administrator. But it is not effective until Judge Gamble approves it, and Mr. Jones could appeal any ruling. That means the fate of Infowars remains in limbo until the court rules, probably sometime in the next two weeks. Mr. Jones continues to operate Infowars.com and host its weekday program, “The Alex Jones Show.”
The Onion Has a New Plan to Take Over Infowars https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/20/business/infowars-alex-jo...
I can’t believe this.
I saw OP and went to infowars dot com to have a look. I scrolled a bit, clicked some links, looked at the store, had a good laugh at the comedy of this ironic site.
Now you’re telling me the site is not a joke from The Onion? Reality is stranger than fiction.
My favorite headlines:
"Video: ‘Homophobic’ 6-Week-Old Baby Cries After Gay Dad Tells Him ‘There Is No Mama’"
"UK Approves Bills To Remove Criminal Penalties For Women Who Commit Their Own Abortions"
"Nigerian Photographed Killing Cat And Trying To Cook It In Front Of Children’s Playground In Italy"
> 6-Week-Old Baby
I appreciate this story appears to be all about the rage-bate headlines, but I don't believe that either six-week old babies say "Mama" (with purpose) or that a baby that age would be capable of responding in the way described to an adult saying "there is no Mama". It doesn't work like that at that age.
[Source: have three kids]
Source: the video: https://x.com/OliLondonTV/status/2045335697893269640
Edit: but it is likely the baby is older than 6 weeks in that video - this seems to be the source of confusion (read carefully - the 6-week-old video was a different, older video):
In December, when Texson was 6 weeks old, he shared a video with the text overlay “6 week old homophobic baby,” which was viewed more than 36 million times. In that video, Texson smiles in response to being told he has a sister, a brother and puppies but frowns when McAnally says that he has two dads. In the most recent video McAnally has shared, Texson laughs and says the sound “ma ma ma,” when asked if he wants “dada or pop.” Later on, in the video, he cries and looks frustrated." - https://www.newsweek.com/entertainment/shane-mcanally-video-...
Of course, getting stuck on if they got the age of the baby wrong is throwing out the baby with the bathwater - the main thrust of the story is true.
> In that video, Texson smiles in response to being told he has a sister, a brother and puppies but frowns when McAnally says that he has two dads
[Apologies for being somewhat absolutist about this, but...] babies do not (typically) understand the literal meaning of words - or indeed understand language generally - at 6 weeks. They may understand tone, but not words.
Again, rage bait headlines and all that.
> Of course, getting stuck on if they got the age of the baby wrong
Was hoping to provide useful data for any readers who may be here to "gratify their intellectual curiosity"* that certain claims referenced in this thread are ... implausible ... and that's putting it mildly.
* this is HN ;)
"6-Week-Old" babies don't have the muscle strength to hold their heads horizontally like that (and IMHO it would be foolhardy to wave them around like that)...
Pronounced social smiling (as in the video) already by six weeks would also pretty unusual.
Hah yes, many years I got into a debate with someone here or was it Reddit about the "intuitiveness of iOS" and someone claiming "I've handed my iPad to my 3 month old and they are able to swipe and navigate"...
No, your baby typically needs to be propped up to sit at that age. They simply don't have that fine motor control and coordination, let alone the comprehension of whatever app you put in front of them.
My 7-month old likes to play with my android watch. It's locked so she just futzes with the lock screen. But she doesn't know how to swipe or navigate, she just likes that it's shiny and does something interesting when she touches is.
That said, for me, having only ever used android phones, I always find myself wondering "how do you go back" when I help my mom with her iPhone. No back button! So I guess I'm not as intuitive as a 3 month old on reddit :)
So a Mr. McAnally told his son he has two dads? Sounds beleivable.
I'm not sure what point you're making but there's nothing satirical about the second headline. The UK really did just legislate to decriminalise abortion up to the point of birth.
I don't see how that's a laughing matter.
That is simply not true. https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2026/03/27/misleading-hea...
TLDR: not legalised in the wider sense that any doctors or institutions involved with the abortion can perform the abortion until arbitrary late, but DOES remove liability from the pregnant women. So in case her abortion is aided or abetted those people are still criminally liable, but if she does it on her own somehow, then it is in fact legalised by the recent change. So, it depends on the situation, and if the mother is the sole actor or not. If she is the sole actor, it seems abortion has been arbitrarily legalized according to kuerbels' link. This also makes it important that people like kuerbel disseminate such a correction: the platitude that all abortions are now legalized would send the wrong message / legal advice to any accomplices in the abortion, even if the mother can do this with impunity, if you aid or abet her in it you can be held liable!
> So in case her abortion is aided or abetted those people are still criminally liable, but if she does it on her own somehow, then it is in fact legalised by the recent change. So, it depends on the situation, and if the mother is the sole actor or not.
Wheter acting solo or with aid of others, the mother is no longer liable for criminal charges. Full Stop.
See, much better articles that address the actual ammended bill and passing into law rather than focussing on the confusion spread by various media sources.
eg: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/17/law-pardon-wom...
This is a change that would have impacted a total of 20 woman in the entire 100 years of the 19th Century and almost the same number of woman from the last two decades.
I agree! Not at all a laughing matter; rather, a critical landmark in the preservation of individual rights.
Wait... Do you think the Nigerian cooking a cat in public is satire? The man raping a goat in France?
Is this how normies are coping?
Also:
> Trump Responds To Controversial Image Of Himself As Jesus, Says It Actually Depicted Him As A Doctor & Slams “Fake News” For The Misinterpretation
Had I not already heard this story via the mainstream media on this side of the Atlantic, this could easily be another satirical headline. With Trump as President, Poe’s law now covers reporting on facts – not just expressions of opinion.
"Afghani Arrested On Suspicion Of Raping Goats In France"
"Trump Anticipates Chinese Leader “Will Give Me A Big, Fat Hug”"
"Photos Of A Cucumber & Ron Paul Playing Baseball Massively Ratio Netanyahu & Mark Levin On X"
> "Trump Anticipates Chinese Leader “Will Give Me A Big, Fat Hug”"
To be fair, he did.
I don’t see what’s so funny about them, especially the last one.
Same... Why is nobody explaining themselves? Please, someone?
Unlocked link for the NYT article: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/20/business/infowars-alex-jo...
I’m surprised they’ve said it so confidently given how it completely collapsed last time…
I believe its because its a different structure.
Previously, they were trying to buy the assets outright. That got into the "one group of families is owned $1.4 billion and another is owned $50 million" and the "how do you maximize the returns from Alex Jones assets to satisfy those claims?"
This is using a different structure.
> On Monday, Mr. Milligan asked Maya Guerra Gamble, a judge in Texas’s Travis County District Court overseeing the disposition of Infowars, to approve that licensing agreement in a court filing. Under the terms, The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron, would pay $81,000 a month to license Infowars.com and its associated intellectual property — such as its name — for an initial six months, with an option to renew for another six months.
They're not buying it - they're licensing it from the victims families instead.
Well, that's an example of exactly the type of media outlet they're trying to create!
Consider the fact this is a satirical news website; a fictional CEO; an imaginary corporation; and it literally proposes a vision of "Not just ads, but scams! Not just scams, but lies with no object [...] A digital platform where, every day, visitors sacrifice themselves at altars of delusion and misery"
I'm surprised you're surprised.
I think it's a good PR move. "Hey, look at how reasonable we've been in spite of the legal craziness. We've put money on the table and are moving forward with a plan that benefits everyone." Now anyone who blocks the plan will be seen as the problem.
> Nothing can stop us now that we’re in charge of a website.
Somehow I don't think the confidence is meant to be taken at exactly face value.
> Seems like it's still not theirs until a judge signs off on it.
Does that mean their use of the branding and claims of ownership could be illegal or would it be covered under the first ammendment?
Misinformation is funny now! This is all part of the joke- they were a funny fake news site that bought an unfunny fake news site, now their fake news doesn't need to be funny and that's what makes it funny.
Maybe you're not highbrow enough for this...
This is not final and still has to be approved by a judge (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/20/business/infowars-alex-jo...)
> Tim Heidecker, one of the comedians behind “Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!” on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim, has been hired to serve as “creative director of Infowars.” He said he initially plans to parody Mr. Jones’s “whole modus operandi.”
> Mr. Heidecker has been working on his impression of Mr. Jones. But eventually, when that joke gets old, Mr. Heidecker said that he hoped to turn Infowars into a destination for independent and experimental comedy.
> “I just thought it would be just a beautiful joke if we could take this pretty toxic, negative, destructive force of Infowars and rebrand it as this beautiful place for our creativity,” Mr. Heidecker said in an interview.
heidecker has been honing this persona for years now in the On Cinema universe. looking forward to this quite a bit
He understands the modern conservative male mindset better than anyone, it's amazing
Tim Heidecker... from?
Only a real film buff will appreciate this
Of course Hacker News would be full of Greggheads.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_%26_Eric
From Decker vs. Dracula
Free Real Estate
My favorite recent thing from Tim Heidecker was him interviewing Fred Armisen in the style of Bill Maher. The parody is uncanny. I could see him doing a really good Alex Jones.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ha6D1LQGD4
Birds aren't real 2.0
I love it.
Right up with the crypto scam that followed it. Great.
In case you didn't know, the creators of Birds aren't real rug pulled and stole millions with their crypto coin.
If true, you have to admire their commitment to the bit.
I didn't find anything about this though.
You want to look for Enron - they bought the hostname as part of something
I saw a couple stories about that which suggested it was a parody shitcoin. Even if not, the name Enron should've been an obvious clue.
I was unaware of that, disappointing.
I think it's better if they keep all the URLs as they are right now, but then add misinformation into each page and put a big banner saying that this site is parody. Then search and AI will index this and then it will another lawsuit from Alex Jones to get the information removed from those alternate sources.
> then add misinformation into each page
As opposed to the current factual information?
His brand of comedy is very hit-or-miss for me (the best way I can describe it is "smug"), but context drives me to wish him luck in his presumed efforts to turn InfoWars into a literal joke instead of just a figurative one.
I would describe it as absurdism.
The two aren't mutually exclusive. Neutral third party Gemini T. Google, what say you?
Neat.For contrast, this is what I'd call absurdism without being smug: https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fs...
"Neutral third party Gemini T. Google"
yeah public traded companies that donate heavily to the GOP are neutral
I can see that - kind of like Will Ferrell has reflected on playing dumb people who are extremely confident. So I feel smug does slot in there but I don't feel like it defines it.
“Tinkle Outside the Binkle” is exactly something Tim would say.
Oh joy, the old Onion News Network is back! Welcome back, Jim Haggerty! Some beautiful examples below…
—-
Today Now!: Save Money By Taking A Vacation Entirely In Your Mind
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7qYL_KT06-U
Today Now! Host Undergoes Horrifically Painful Surgery Live On Air
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_5yR--35uqA
How To Channel Your Road Rage Into Cold, Calculating Road Revenge
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vuKnR8RvxHY
My favorite that I post every May 5th is Hurricane Ashley.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWQN5-Top6g
> Nothing can stop us now that we’re in charge of a website.
I love that. Like a familiar smell, it triggered in me a long lost memory of the old hacker ethos.
So they are now setting the content on infowars.com? Honestly, I can't tell since everything on that site looks so fake it isn't believable. The onion transition may be hard to detect.
Seems like there will be a new logo with an onion on it, judging from the tote bag merch shown in the article. That's when we'll know, I suppose.
Assuming that the announcement video Ben Collins posted represents the new logo, it's a delightfully pride rainbow-colored InfoWars logo with an onion in place of the 'o'.
https://bsky.app/profile/bencollins.bsky.social/post/3mjwx7i...
I visited with my family in rural Missouri recently. Alex Jones and InfoWars is gospel to them. I was amazed at how many times cited him as an authority on various topics. I thought they were joking, but apparently, Obama made a promise with his father before his passing that he would destroy the United States. Oh, and of course, Obama is Satan, and Trump was sent by God to protect us all. Of course.
It's your duty as a Hacker News to subtly introduce the Free Software Foundation and/or GNU into a conversation with them.
When they ask about it, throw a bunch of breathless praise on Stallman hacking the laser printer, building an OS from scratch, predicting DRM, fighting against cellphone surveillance, etc.
Tell them you'll send them a link. Then link them to the Alex Jones interview with Richard Stallman. (It's a pretty good interview, btw.)
It's like hiding broccoli in a chocolate bar they were going to eat anyway.
Grew up in Springfield, posting this from California. There's a reason for that.
It’s the weather, right? Not a big fan of west coast politics compared to back home but I’ll tolerate it in exchange for the sun :)
The winters ain't bad either.
How are they handling the breakup?
As of even more recently, Jones believes Trump is under demonic influences.
Maybe that explains the video Trump posted
Obama got to Trump now, too?! LOL
Despite the article, infowars.com at least doesn't really seem to be run by The Onion yet? But I'm looking at that site for the first time so I have no idea.
to be honest I doubt anyone will notice that much of a difference, infowars is so nuts that any sane person would think it parody
True. Still needs a judge to sign off, which I kind of doubt will happen.
It's called Global Tetrahedron but it has a dodecahedron as a logo/emblem (guessing intentional)
Nothing else matters in the world today
"Tu Stultus Es"
"Drugs Win Drug War"
"History Sighs, Repeats Itself"
and of course...
"SICKOS"
Worth highlighting:
> “The goal for the families we represent has always been to prevent Alex Jones from being able to cause harm at scale, the way he did against them,” said Chris Mattei, the lawyer who argued the Connecticut families’ case in court. The deal with The Onion promises “to significantly degrade his power to do that.”
> The Onion also plans to sell merchandise and share the proceeds with the Sandy Hook families.
Great work by all on this effort.
I reallyyyyy want a gay frogs t-shirt, I would wear the hell out of that. That entire rant and meme it spawned is the only good thing to come out of that man
Here you go https://neongrizzly.com/products/copy-of-rainbow-gay-frog-ho...
neongrizzly.com (Erik of internet comment etiquette's webstore) has had a gay frog shirt for years, if you're interested.
Having an official infowars one without giving Jones any money might be more appealing though.
yeah, I was pretty sure they already existed (and if not I have a printer and some tshirt iron ons) but thought an official one would be funny
>With this new InfoWars, we will democratize psychological torture, welcoming brutal and sadistic ideas from everyone, even the very stupidest among us. It will be like the Manhattan Project, only instead of a bomb, we will be building a website.
This is hilarious.
This is a very impressive satire on the Palantir manifesto.
Accidental and ironic, but still impressive.
I looked it up and was not surprised to see the rabid ramblings of a tech bro psychopath (but I repeat myself) with a drug addiction who gleefully admitted to wanting to hunt down Palantir's detractors with AI drones used to spray them with fentanyl-laced urine.
Finally, competition for Clickhole.
The Onion also owns Clickhole
Used to. Sold to Cards Against Humanity.
Oh shit, was not aware.
It was barely funny when I read the headline a few years ago. Really weird story, I guess I just don't understand the humor at all. I'd rather stop hearing about InfoWars entirely.
Bear in mind buying it to ruin it is a very real public service. Alex Jones was hoping a conservative ally would buy it and then just continue to let him do what he wants.
Jokes aside, The Onion is basically spending a giant pile of money to burn the website down.
I remember when The KLF burned a million quid. They were being internally consistent. It was artistically relevant.
Most people thought they were insane. Bill Drummond wrote about how it strained his relationship with his kids. You can tell that he regrets it.
Personally I think a million bucks to lease a domain name for a year is a really terrible business decision. You might be able to argue that it's going to victims but you could almost certainly just park that money into an interest-bearing account and do better for those victims.
But it's also been obvious from the beginning (starting with Jones' own comments) that nobody really gives a shit about these families and they're just props in other peoples' theater show.
If benefitting the victims is a goal, then clearly sending them money now is more valuable than sending them interest-borne money later.
If the victims don't benefit from the money now, they can bear their own interest. Time-value, etc.
The cost seems really high. On the other hand I thought bringing the Onion back as a print comedy newspaper was insane too, so possibly they know things I don’t. There is a business plan here, even if it’s a dumb one.
I get the impression that beyond the money from the sale, the victims would very much like Alex Jones control of InfoWars to end. This accomplishes both of those things. I don't generally find The Onion that funny, and probably will never visit the new InfoWars, but I'm eternally grateful that they were willing to step in and do this. Because someone had to. A "good business decision" is to let Alex run his show if you buy the brand, but that's still a win for him.
Not only would another owner likely allow Alex Jones to continue to operate, but The Onion can truly salt the earth around Alex Jones' business. If they own the InfoWars trademarks... if they own The Alex Jones Show as a trademark? They can potentially shut down Alex Jones' future works if they violate InfoWars' trademarks and intellectual property. They can sue him if he says something defamatory about the new InfoWars. One of the perks here is that The Onion is well-versed in free speech rights, intellectual property rights, and trademark law. They already have lawyers good at this stuff.
The Onion can be a truly significant thorn in Jones' side, the way most other outcomes for this could not. I'm guessing the new site won't be that funny, but thankfully I don't really care about the "art".
The original goal was to put money in the hands of the Sandy Hook victims without the website continuing on to another set of deplorable owners.
Alex Jones lives rent free in peoples heads. They mistake a phyrric victory for a real victory.
they took everything he owned and are now unraveling all the bullshit tricks he used to hide his assets. Certainly it's more real than phyrric.
He can own new things. So, other than inconveniencing him slightly, I'm not sure what we've accomplished.
... after he services his debt, then he can have toys.
That's not at all how corporate or personal bankruptcies work. You exactly prove my point.
.. but in this case: https://www.npr.org/2025/08/13/nx-s1-5501648/alex-jones-info...
"If Infowars' brand and property are sold, Jones could still start a new company or work for someone else. But because the bankruptcy judge ruled Jones' behavior "willful and malicious," the bankruptcy will not erase Jones' debt, meaning families can keep claiming any money he makes in the future until he pays the $1.3 billion he owes them."
Take some time to see how bankruptcy works. You cannot take all of someones property, nor can you take all of their paycheck. There are specific limits. You can also still come to an alternate settlement with your creditors.
This idea that he "can't have toys" or the court is "going to take is cat" because he has debts is insanity.
Let's say it's your family member. And they go bankrupt due to medical bills. Is this how you want the system to treat them? Justice isn't an opportunity to demean people you don't like.
People will tolerate all kinds of bad precedent and injustice simply because of their emotions. Which might be fine, but to see it drizzle onto the front page of Hacker News, I have to agree with the OP, is annoying.
The Onion's humor is like that drawing of the angry crying guy wearing a laughing face mask. It's only "funny" if you're pissed off about something.
Who isn’t pissed off about something in 2026?
Yeah people are, and they do make fun of some things I'm pissed off about too, but that doesn't make it funny. It's an "only-if" relationship.
Finally, wojak invocation on HN
Proud to be part of this historic moment, took until 2026 but better late than never
Woo hoo, sounds like some of their jokes landed and you just couldn't take it. Do you only appreciate humor if it's punching down?
Do you have any funny jokes about the children who were "killed" at Sandy Hook or the crisis actors who pretended to be their parents and mourn for them that you want to share with the class?
That's the thing, their jokes don't land. Idk what the Sandy Hook shooting has to do with this, the Onion has been around for much longer.
> Idk what the Sandy Hook shooting has to do with this, the Onion has been around for much longer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27No_Way_to_Prevent_This,%27_...
> 'No Way to Prevent This,' Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens
They've reprinted / reposted that article 39 times since 2014 (Sandy Hook was in 2012)
Gun violence is something that the editorial board of The Onion feels strongly about.
Ok so they feel strongly about gun violence, where's the humorous part here? It's a pretty funny headline being used the first time, maybe they were better in 2014.
Satire doesn't always have to be "ha ha" funny. They've got plenty of that material.
As mass shootings became more and more common as a news satire site they felt that they couldn't continue to keep their heads in the sand and needed to write something about it. They couldn't continue to not write something about the news, and yet they felt they had to write something. Jimmy Kimmel is often Ha Ha funny... and yet https://youtu.be/ruYeBXudsds https://youtu.be/sB0wWEFIr50 https://youtu.be/Z0vLiQLpsc8
When you make jokes about the news, sometimes you have to write about the not ha ha funny, but rather the tragic news instead. This is how The Onion has addressed it.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-the-onion-became-one-of-th... ( https://archive.is/hEJhg )
> And as mass shootings increasingly became a tragic and appalling feature of the Obama era, it also became a subject that The Onion could not avoid covering all too routinely. “As more and more shootings happened, it became something that—as an organization that comments on the news—we couldn’t not write stories about…and it kept on growing and growing and growing to the point where [the problem of gun violence] just seemed overwhelming.”
Sounds like what I originally said, it's not actually funny, it's just sad/angry. South Park has some examples of doing satire right.
No actually the thing is that their jokes landed well enough to make you dislike them, because the joke's on you.
What joke is on me? Some people are downvoting/flagging me, maybe the joke is on them.
Can someone put me to speed on it? Who is the onion? Who is info wars? What is happening? I can't comprehend but it feels that I cannot really Google for it
The Onion is a long standing satirical news site. They run crazy stories intended to make readers laugh. Infowars was a disinformation/conspiracy site that ran crazy headlines to outrage their audience. The owner of Infowars was sued into oblivion for saying the Sandy Hook school shooting was faked as a pretense to pass gun control. So now crazy conspiracy site is sold to satire site to help pay off the massive judgment against them. Basically a merger of the two fakest news sites on the Internet except now we can all just laugh.
The Onion used to be a humorous satire news site before wokenites took over.
Incidentally, this also describes the greater part of HN. AI made it possible.
> Such is the InfoWars I envision: An infinite virtual surface teeming with ads. Not just ads, but scams! Not just scams, but lies with no object, free radical misinformation, sentences and images so poorly thought out that they are unhealthy even to view for just a few seconds.
In any age where Polymarket didn't already exist, we'd have called this satire.
It's still not as bad as the actual InfoWars, which if I recall was selling "Alex Jones Natural" supplements, which were mostly just stuff like regular iodine tablets with a massive market and a cool name like "Survival Shield X-2."
Maybe that could help fund The Onion. Why should the rich on the right have a monopoly on swindling the poor on the right with fake supplements?
That assholes are kicking rubes is not a good reason for you to kick rubes.
I hope they invite the knowledge fight guys, a couple of podcasters who mock and debunk infowars, down to film a show in the infowars studio. They helped the sandy hook families legal with their case and are generally awesome guys.
Please can someone correct my opinion on this because I'm sure I'm missing something.
I find it crazy that in the US you can't take an opinion on something without risking being bankrupted because that thing you said is later proven untrue and that it hurt someone's feelings – feeling which in the US have a monetary value of billions apparently.
I agree that the media should be evidence based and it's bad when the media is presenting things which are clearly false, but I also think that sometimes the evidence is misleading and speculation can be useful to get to the truth.
Surely cases like this show that it's simply far too dangerous to report on something in the US which might both upset people and could later proven to be false?
We have a similar issue in the UK where even when it's widely understood that someone is abusing kids, if they're famous our media basically can't say anything because they'll risk being sued. While our law is well intentioned, it seems that it really just suppresses the free exchange of information which has repeatedly led to harms against children. The speculation while often harmful is sometimes useful.
I just feel like there's a middle ground here. Maybe you can sue, but perhaps your feelings are only worth a few hundred thousand pounds? I get the US is much richer than the UK but being sued for billions for being wrong and hurting peoples feelings just seems insane. And I agree Jones was completely wrong to have said what he said.
Why am I wrong on this? I hate holding this opinion and would like it changed.
Yes, your understanding is not aligned with the facts of the case. This was not close to an unfair abridgement of Mr. Jones's rights.
Timeline:
1. Alex Jones hosts guests on his show questioning if a mass school shooting was a falsified event.
2. The controversy drove a massive increase in traffic to his videos.
3. This encouraged Mr. Jones to host additional guests who made direct claims that parents of the slain children were actors hired by the US government.
4. Those parents received intense harassment and death threats. Many had to move away from their homes.
5. The parents sent many requests to the Infowars show asking Mr. Jones to stop claiming they were actors; Infowars did not stop.
6. The parents sued.
7. Infowars failed to comply with standard evidence discovery requests.
8. After many attempts by the court to achieve compliance, the plaintiffs moved for a default judgement. The court accepted.
9. At the award hearing, plaintiffs provided evidence that Mr. Jones moved assets out of Infowars to a company owned by his parents specifically to evade paying the judgment.
10. The jury at the award hearing awarded the plaintiffs about $1B in damages. Rationale was to discourage Mr. Jones from continuing to libel family members impacted by mass shootings.
The award hearing was exceptionally dramatic and theatrical. The defense was repeatedly caught in lies and accidentally sent evidence to the plaintiff's lawyer, revealing Mr. Jones's perjury.
Let's not ignore the fact that Jones's lawyers also completely messed up the discovery process by providing the prosecution with everything, including correspondence they had with Jones essentially admitting everything.
The prosecution even told them that they had completely fucked up and did they intend to send everything, and the defense said "Yes". Then when these messages were brought up in court, the defense tried to say that they couldn't be allowed because they were private correspondence between them and their client. To which the prosecution supplied their conversation with the defense showing that tried to make them aware and gave them a chance to correct their error.
It was a monumental fuck up.
The key element you’re missing is that the lawsuit accused Alex Jones of knowing that he was lying. I.e., it’s not that he was speculating — it’s that he knew he wasn’t telling the truth.
To quote Jones:
“We’ve clearly got people where it’s actors playing different parts of different people. I’ve looked at it and undoubtedly there’s a cover-up, there’s actors, they’re manipulating, they’ve been caught lying and they were pre-planning before it and rolled out with it.”
That isn’t even phrased as a “what if” — it’s asserting that Sandy Hook was staged. It’s framed as a truth, not a possibility, and the jury found that Alex Jones knew it wasn’t true when he was saying it.
Why so large? A few reasons. First, this was for 26 families, so a substantial number of people. Second, we’re not just talking emotional damages — we’re talking harassment that these folks received as a result of Jones’ lies. Third, a big chunk of the damages were punitive. Alex Jones has a history of lying to expand his audience, recklessly ignoring the effects of those lies. A judge decided that the verdict needed to be big enough to discourage Jones from continuing to lie.
(Arguably that didn’t work.)
> That isn’t even phrased as a “what if” — it’s asserting that Sandy Hook was staged. It’s framed as a truth, not a possibility, and the jury found that Alex Jones knew it wasn’t true when he was saying it.
I think the deliberate maliciousness of it should bare more punishment, but I still think $1B is extremely unreasonable.
It's also absurd to me that a judge should have the right to make up an arbitrarily big number as a means to inflect a secondary punishment. $1 million is discouragement, $1 billion is an attempt to destroy the business and his life. While I have no sympathy for Jones, I still find this problematic if what you're saying is true.
Judges don't have that ability.
They have the ability to determine punitive damages within guidelines (many states have caps, for example), and if the defendant feels the damages are unreasonable they have every right to appeal to a higher court. Eventually the Supreme Court may make an unappealable decision, but the appeals process has to stop somewhere.
And at some point society needs a way to tell people who ignore lesser consequences that they don't get to participate in that society any more. In this case I think Alex Jones crossed enough malicious lines to deserve it; he's in bad shape because he's the kind of person who accuses school shooting survivors of fraud even though he knew he wasn't true! He had every chance in the world to back off and apologize, but he didn't. He tried to avoid facing judgement by hiding behind bankruptcy. He is a very bad human being.
Now, is that always the case for this kind of judgement? Nope, sometimes the system fails. Some people would say Gawker is an example of that failure. I am not totally sure about that one, but even if it is... I'm reluctant to toss out an entire system unless it's a systemic problem. And Alex Jones experiencing consequences for lying for profit does not seem, to me, to be evidence of a systemic problem.
Thank you for engaging with me in good faith and helping me understand your perspective.
> And at some point society needs a way to tell people who ignore lesser consequences that they don't get to participate in that society any more. In this case I think Alex Jones crossed enough malicious lines to deserve it; he's in bad shape because he's the kind of person who accuses school shooting survivors of fraud even though he knew he wasn't true! He had every chance in the world to back off and apologize, but he didn't. He tried to avoid facing judgement by hiding behind bankruptcy. He is a very bad human being.
I do agree that he deserved to be punished, and it's interesting because I also agree he deserved it.
I suspect it's because I'm wired extremely libertarian that I don't agree with the $1b damages judgement.
Fundamentally I don't like a system which has the power to make you pay $1b because you lied and hurt people. Even though I acknowledge these things are bad I think are deserving of punishment.
Maybe a good analogy is kids on motorbikes – motorbikes are deathtraps and anyone who allows their kid to ride on a motorbike without deserves to have their head kicked in. But no more what stats I cite for whatever reason it's one of those things where people just say, "don't care, I should be allowed to do that even if I'm risking killing my kid". I'm kinda like that with everything. I don't know why. I don't choose it, I just seem to prefer liberty at the cost of harm in almost all cases.
A just society would be free to take care of individuals like Alex Jones in whatever why they see fit.
> we’re talking harassment that these folks received as a result of Jones’ lies
Remember when BBC edited someone's speech to call citizens to storm and riot at a certain building?
> and that it hurt someone's feelings
This is the part where it becomes impossible to have an honest discussion.
Depp v. Heard is another famous US libel case, but more controversial. They ruled that Heard made false claims (not just speculation) that harmed Depp's career, and she intended for it to hurt his reputation. Alex Jones met similar criteria except much worse.
True though, you could be held liable if you used what you thought was real evidence to ruin someone's reputation, only to find out that it's false. I think it's on you to be careful of that.
The tik-tok psychic defamation case would likely be better comparison (which is on par with Depp v. Heard). She defamed an innocent college professor about committing murder based on tarot card readings and continued to do so after the actual murder was convicted and receiving cease and desist letters.
Local newspaper - https://www.idahostatesman.com/news/northwest/idaho/article3...
Legal Bytes (actual lawyer commentary) https://youtu.be/80h2048o7Fc
An opinion would be something like "I think it's good that those kids were shot".
You could say that all day and people would not like you, but no one could do anything about it.
What Alex Jones did was deny reality. He suggested that the victims did not exist. He suggested the event did not happen and the grieving parents were government-hired actors. He riled up his listeners and effectively sent them after people. He did this in spite of knowing what he was saying on his show was not true. That was a large part of things, that Alex Jones was aware he was spreading misinformation.
Let's not pretend Alex Jones was doing was voicing a "difference of opinion".
> What Alex Jones did was deny reality. He suggested that the victims did not exist. He suggested the event did not happen and the grieving parents were government-hired actors. He riled up his listeners and effectively sent them after people. He did this in spite of knowing what he was saying on his show was not true. That was a large part of things, that Alex Jones was aware he was spreading misinformation.
> Let's not pretend Alex Jones was doing was voicing a "difference of opinion".
I agree. I'm disagreeing purely on whether $1 billion is a reasonable fine for deliberately lying. Not on whether he is guilty.
What do you feel would be an appropriate punishment?
You've done a lot of whinging about how you feel the $1B is too much but that you do feel Alex Jones should be punished. Try staking out a position on what you think should happen instead of this continual "yes but not that" mess.
Honestly, I'm not sure about the $1B number, but it needed to at the very least be the amount he made from slandering them on InfoWars, otherwise he'd still have profited off it. That would probably bankrupt him either way.
I think with Alex Jones in particular it's that people knew he had money, and so they wanted a piece of it. If you're a nobody and you say false things no one cares really. Look at all the randos on X spouting nonsense without repercussions. It didn't help that these people in power don't like him.
It's dangerous to say false things and have a lot of money. People in power will use it as an excuse to take your money away, unless you're allied with them, of course.
The randos on Twitter didn't cause actual harm to the people they were slandering. You can't make a case for libel against them.
Sorry, you're saying the parents of kids killed at Sandy Hook were just using Jones as a payday?
> It's dangerous to say false things and have a lot of money.
Correction: As someone who has developed themselves as a media personality, it's dangerous to say false things, particularly if the saying of false things is explicitly intended to enrich themselves further as a media personality, and they're aware of the falseness of what they're saying.
When you add in the rest of the details the outcome starts to make a lot of sense!
The victims went after a slanderer who systematically profited from his lies. Don't see why we should compare him to randos on Twitter.
Like Scientology suing and taking over The Cult Awareness network.
Thank you, Tetrahedron - you are the best possible end for that nasty site.
Between this takeover, and Trump’s BRUTAL takedown of AJ a few days ago, karma seems to be catching up with that shit peddling, abusive bottom-feeder scum that is AJ.
Here is to them eating each other, and choking on it.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/knowledge-fight/id1192...
The Onion running Infowars sounds objectively less entertaining even if you believe EVERYTHING Alex says is a lie.
Alex Jones is much more entertaining if you imagine he's just really into Warhammer 40K lore: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZuYt1QlzMw
alex, apparently, has set up a fall back channel. He's gotta keep hocking those dr. jones naturals boner pills to the boomers.
You want to be associated with toxic waste IP?
Why? You're not going to attract any of the audience. You likely could have just chose a new name and built whatever you want to do with this.
It may be helpful context to understand that The Onion is a satirical publication, and that them taking over InfoWars may itself be part of the joke.
Stopping the current owner of infowars from continuing is a valid "why". What happens after doesn't matter.
The Onion and Mr Beast are the highbrow and lowbrow versions of the same niche: absurdism, spectacle and indifference without staying power. Since there's such low retention, the content must be weighted to constant new conversions and new reconversions.
Edit: if you have the time, watch their youtube series Sex House, Helcomb County Municipal Lake Dredge Appraisals and Dr. Good (approx 75 minutes each). There's no nudity, gore or cursing, just some very clever themes about the parallels between television and hell that are still relevant right now, if not more so.
The Onion has been around since 1988, so...decent staying power.
And hasn't had any cultural relevance aside from this stunt for just about the last decade.
It's like saying that National Lampoon is still relevant.
They have a larger audience for their print version than the Boston Globe. It's the 12th largest paper by circulation in the country!
https://www.fastcompany.com/91502944/the-onion-most-innovati...
This is likely because The Onion was purchased by Univision in 2016 and then bounced around in a couple more acquisitions over the next decade. Ben Collins got the helm in 2024 and has been doing, in my opinion, a fantastic job with the brand.
do you have a rubric to share for qualifying for cultural relevance?
65,000 print subscribers (on par with the Boston Globe!) and 300% revenue growth last year suggests they're doing okay.
https://www.fastcompany.com/91502944/the-onion-most-innovati...
When I worked at an ISP we had a lot of landline phone customers too and I'm sure they will continue to for a long time.
At least as long as their current customers keep breathing.
You can run a business off inertia/nostalgia for quite a long time.
People are confused about what I said. Success and Relevance are not the same thing. National Lampoon still has a business too, but I doubt that any of you have seen a new movie of theirs since Van Wilder/Repli-Kate came out in 2002.
A million dollars a year for a domain name is quite a lot. And I know what was paid for the sales of some big (in the keyword marketing/leadgen space) domain names...Sale, not lease.
> You can run a business off inertia/nostalgia for quite a long time.
They only reintroduced print editions in 2024 after an 11 year break. Those 65,000 print subscribers are all people who decided they wanted to start paying money for The Onion in the last 2 years.
If "people are confused" I think it's because you are rejecting empirical evidence that The Onion is relevant without offering any counter-evidence of your own. Is it possible it's just no longer relevant to you personally? (I myself am a proud print subscriber...)
Yeah some people do like feet.
Inertia doesn't really seem like it would lead to 300% YoY growth...
OTOH, National Lampoon hasn't put out a magazine since 1998 or a film since 2015 (and that was a retrospective on the magazine).
I guess I'd agree that, in absolute terms, The Onion might be less of a cultural force than it was in 2005 (say), but part of that has to be that culture is a lot more long-tailed: music, movies, and TV aren't dominated by a handful of works either.
The context for those print subscribers is that this isn't a "had the subscription since the 2010s" They discontinued their print edition in 2013.
Those 65,000 subscriptions are all people who subscribed since 2024 when it was relaunched.
It may be nostalgia, but it is not people who forgot that they had a subscription. It's people who signed up to pay money in the last two years.
> People are confused about what I said.
Because you're saying very confusing things. What does National Lampoon have to do with anything?
> And hasn't had any cultural relevance aside from this stunt for just about the last decade.
You're right! Their own claim is that it's insane they're still around, because they find it hard to match the absurdity of the last 10 years.
You say "without staying power" but I still remember and frequently cite these ancient Onion article headlines:
I mean sure, it's a satirical news site and it's got a constant stream of new content, much of which is forgettable. But that's true of every other news site too. The gems make it stick.Don’t forget the perennial article about gun violence they use after every mass shooting.
"America's Long Nightmare of Peace and Prosperity Finally Over"
That's the joke.
No offense, but the humor of it has gone right over your head. Building an InfoWars clone isn't nearly as funny as acquiring the real one just to mock it.
I guess.. But renting a 4th reich site seems far darker than they might be used to and likely to make them the butt of the joke when Hitler's testtube clone gets elected from it in 35 years.
If thats true, seems like it is 10000x more critical they purchase right to the infowars hiltler cloning facilities and features
Exactly. Buying would at least mean you aren't revamping the value of the site for some next renter in a deeply cynical age where making fun of the orange pedo at a press club ball could cause WWIII.
The money goes to Jones's judgment creditors from Sandy Hook. If not The Onion, it would be some actual right wing media organization...
they should make a clone with a cooler theme and call it KnowledgeBattles.org
Knowledge Fight podcast already took the “synonym name” route. https://knowledgefight.com/
They’re taking advantage of the name recognition to raise money for the families victimized by the horrible people who used to own and run the site.
Reanimating a corpse that was killed under suspicious circumstances, all while milking value out of a name someone else developed and cultivated for years. Frankenstein's monster wearing a skin-suit. I don't see the money in this outside of the freakshow factor. Everybody loves a freak show, but who wants to live there?
A half decent Board of Directors at The Onion mothership would have asked the question: Is this what we should be spending time and money on?
Yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27No_Way_to_Prevent_This,%27_...
https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-the-onion-became-one-of-th... ( https://archive.is/hEJhg )
It is growing and containing its messaging that has been going on for over a decade about gun violence.
From the article:
> But on the topic of gun control and gun violence, it is a political issue that Onion staffers clearly, perhaps even deeply, care about.
> Joe Garden, a former Onion writer and features editor who started working at the publication in the ’90s and left in 2012, told The Daily Beast that while most of the editorial staff tended to lean reliably liberal, their political satire was governed by being “against things that we thought were stupid.”
> And as mass shootings increasingly became a tragic and appalling feature of the Obama era, it also became a subject that The Onion could not avoid covering all too routinely. “As more and more shootings happened, it became something that—as an organization that comments on the news—we couldn’t not write stories about…and it kept on growing and growing and growing to the point where [the problem of gun violence] just seemed overwhelming.”
> “Any mass shooting is horrible, but when they just start happening just a few months [apart], it’s mind-boggling,” Garden continued. “And it’s terrifying that so little has been done about it.”
This is very much in continuing that messaging and mission in the way that they know how.
The Onion is owned by the billionaire founder of Twilio, there is no board of directors.
So you admit they don't have a half-decent board of directors!
Couldn't resist.
Yes, it is!
Maybe it's just me but I don't see much humor in this. His brand and assets may have been liquidated, but he's still doing his show and it remains popular. The only people who really won in this saga are, as usual, the lawyers.
The reason InfoWars is being sold is because of the bankruptcy proceedings. This is money owed to Sandy Hook families [1], who were the target of the harmful conspiracy theories that caused them further pain and suffering.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Hook_Elementary_School_s...
> “The goal for the families we represent has always been to prevent Alex Jones from being able to cause harm at scale, the way he did against them,” said Chris Mattei, the lawyer who argued the Connecticut families’ case in court. The deal with The Onion promises “to significantly degrade his power to do that.”
But the deal doesn't do that. Alex Jones has other websites where he's spewing his nonsense and hawking his merch. Maybe it feels good to get his major brand name, but it is largely inconsequential in limiting his reach.