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Posted by lxm 2 days ago

The Onion to Take over InfoWars(www.nytimes.com)
244 points | 74 comments
jbombadil 7 hours ago|
https://archive.is/yoLYM
qnleigh 5 hours ago||
When this all started, the Onion released a priceless 'press statement':

"Through it all, InfoWars has shown an unswerving commitment to manufacturing anger and radicalizing the most vulnerable members of society—values that resonate deeply with all of us at Global Tetrahedron.

No price would be too high for such a cornucopia of malleable assets and minds. And yet, in a stroke of good fortune, a formidable special interest group has outwitted the hapless owner of InfoWars (a forgettable man with an already-forgotten name) and forced him to sell it at a steep bargain: less than one trillion dollars..."

Full statement here https://theonion.com/heres-why-i-decided-to-buy-infowars/

helsinkiandrew 2 hours ago||
Brilliant plans for the future:

https://theonion.info/?p=1

> 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. The InfoWars of old was only the prototype for the hell I know we can build together: A digital platform where, every day, visitors sacrifice themselves at altars of delusion and misery, their minds fully disintegrating on contact.

guzfip 1 minute ago|||
> A digital platform where, every day, visitors sacrifice themselves at altars of delusion and misery, their minds fully disintegrating on contact.

Zuckerberg already did it.

api 1 hour ago|||
Makes me think of the old Monty Python joke so funny it kills everyone skit.

Which makes me think of a thread years ago I saw on the modern equivalent: a meme so offensive (to literally everyone at once) nobody can see it without having an anger induced aneurism.

rescripting 31 minutes ago||
See also, the children’s book Fluffy McWhiskers Cuteness Explosion.
54aJh 2 hours ago|||
The Onion is satire, so ... But Alex Jones is currently busy with Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly and others to bitterly criticize Trump for the Iran war.

Trump retaliated by calling all of them "low IQ".

Given that Carlson's media company has an investment from the ubiquitous 1789 Capital (Thiel and Trump Jr.), we don't know if this is theater to keep the isolationist MAGA in the fold.

It could also be that they sacrifice Trump in order to accelerate Thiel's and Vance's technocracy.

Anyway, these influencers are still useful for their masters.

afavour 1 hour ago|||
They’re just reading polls and reacting accordingly. There’s no principle involved.
brookst 4 minutes ago|||
And they aren’t being objective and rational about the polls, they are funding and cherry-picking poll data that tells them to do what they want to do.

There’s no principle, no strategy, no goal. We’re living in the political version of Cube, and just like the movie: it’s a headless blunder operating under the illusion of a master plan.

lesuorac 1 hour ago|||
Literally no principal involved.

Tucker will take any position for money see his entire career!

Plus the guy was advocating the administration should attack Iran for attempting to assassinate trump.

ourmandave 20 minutes ago||
I dunno, he's pretty consistent as a white nationalist.

Having to take unscheduled vacations from Fox News over some of his more racist comments.

towledev 2 hours ago|||
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nathanmills 1 hour ago||
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lynx97 2 hours ago|||
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franga2000 2 hours ago|||
What exactly is patronizing here? Or is it just calling them the most vulnerable?
wutwutwat 1 hour ago|||
The list you just thought up trying to argue about literal jokes from a literal joke making company tells us more about you and your opinions regarding others than it says about the joke the joke making company made
glimshe 4 hours ago||
[flagged]
win2k 4 hours ago||
Babylon Bee forces you to accept cookies to use their site. Worth avoiding.
Traster 3 hours ago|||
As with all silly internet block BS, simply reload the site and hit escape before the cookie banner loads.
latexr 3 hours ago|||
> reload the site and hit escape

What exactly does that do? Which web browser?

I’m on mobile right now, so can’t test.

win2k 3 hours ago||
I'm on Firefox and it did nothing for me. The popup came up so fast between me refreshing and hitting escape.

Alternatively, you can disable JavaScript on the website. That lets me view it.

vasco 3 hours ago|||
Or just inspect element + press delete. In some cases you also need to then delete an extra gray overlay and re-enable scroll on the base html tag, but takes 30s
LightBug1 4 hours ago|||
I shut that site down as soon as I saw that. Gross.
gnabgib 7 hours ago||
Discussion (627 points, 2 days ago, 320 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47837611
mikeodds 4 hours ago||
Maybe I’m out of touch, but doesn’t a $1.4b dollar settlement for this seem rather… large?
pie_flavor 3 hours ago||
The context is that Jones blew up the court process every chance he got, setting a new record for contempt fining. The most important piece was refusing to comply with discovery (his lawyer was so bad-behaved here he ended up with a disciplinary suspension). As a result Jones received a default judgement, i.e. the plaintiffs win by default and he doesn't get to argue his case. This also means the plaintiffs get everything they were asking for. And then for some reason he didn't even enter an argument during the damages calculation phase, so the jury just went with whatever the plaintiffs said.
pippy360 44 minutes ago||
Do you have a good/entertaining source for this? I'd love to read (or watch/listen) more about it
ChristianJacobs 3 minutes ago||
LegalEagle[0] covered this shitshow in great detail with solid commentary. Can recommend.

[0]: https://youtu.be/x-QcbOphxYs

This is when from when Jones' lawyer sent a copy of his phone to the opposition...

noirscape 1 hour ago|||
Besides Jones and his lawyer absolutely botching his defense and basically giving up the case (and pissing off the courts as I understand it, which is a bad fucking idea and usually also leads to larger fines), the $1.4 billion is just what Jones managed to rack it up to before entering bankruptcy proceedings, which froze his debt collectors out for a bit.

Alongside the class action, Jones was iirc also facing several separate lawsuits, so what you're seeing here is multiple lost lawsuits (I think he lost 4?) adding up.

The bankruptcy also doesn't wipe the slate clean for Jones afaiu, because he specifically was found to be malicious in his behavior. Court debts aren't wiped in that situation. He's still on the hook for that.

jeroenhd 3 hours ago|||
I don't think so. With how much money was made and direct attacks on individual members on the legal system, I think it's a breath of fresh air to see the rich and influential actually get punished. There's frustrating the legal system, and then there's lying under oath and executing smear campaigns against judges.

If Alex Jones wanted a smaller settlement, he could've chosen to destroy fewer lies, comply with legal orders, or simply not commit any number of his many other legal infractions.

He's desperately trying to weasel his way out of paying any of it back by doing things like moving assets around, leaving companies empty, and then declaring bankruptcy on them. His victims will probably spend the rest of their lives chasing after the compensation they're owed, but perhaps at least taking Jones' branding from him might be punishment for a man like him.

mcdonje 3 hours ago|||
We're not going to have a rehash of the McDonald's coffee settlement argument here, are we?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punitive_damages

Schiendelman 1 hour ago||
She deserved way more than that for the way they tried to smear her afterward!
Zak 37 minutes ago|||
Yes, at first. If it was a typical defamation case based on a single incident or short pattern of conduct, and if Jones behaved like a typical defendant, hiring a competent lawyer and mostly complying with court orders, the judgment would have been a few million dollars. That's not what happened.

Instead, Jones repeatedly failed to comply with court orders and attempted to delay the trial. He lied under oath, broadcast lies about the plaintiffs, and mocked the plaintiffs on his show after losing a case. He additionally broadcast his intent to continue spreading disinformation about the Sandy Hook shooting.

The long-term pattern of treating the court with contempt and clear intent to continue his illegal behavior are an extreme level of noncompliance for a defendant in a lawsuit, and they added up to an extreme penalty.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Jones#Sandy_Hook_Elementa...

austin-cheney 2 hours ago|||
It is absurdly large and deliberately so. First of all this was a class action suit representing 22 plaintiffs. Secondly, the number was large to punish the defendant for continuously disrespecting the count with bad repeated behavior. Third, there was no defense because the defendant failed to work with the court resulting in a summary judgment.
kikokikokiko 3 hours ago||
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OtherShrezzing 3 hours ago|||
I’m just not sure you can make the claim that this is an issue between the outlet and the establishment. It’s had hosts like Roger Stone doing 5 episodes a week. He’s the former campaign advisor for the sitting president of the United States, and advisor to Dole, Bush (both), and Reagan.

It doesn’t get more establishment than that. So the “down and out anti-establishment underdog” narrative doesn’t apply in my opinion.

pjc50 3 hours ago||
To people like that, random college students are "establishment" because they are lefty, and the literal President of the United States is "anti-establishment" because he uses slurs on social media.
pjc50 3 hours ago||||
If people want to get their "hard truths" out, they shouldn't contaminate them with 9/10 parts of lies, and they certainly shouldn't run a harassment campaign against the parents of murdered children.

> Infowars delenda est.

Yes.

BadBadJellyBean 3 hours ago||||
He hurt innocent people with his voice without regrets. He wanted to die on that hill and if so he can be lucky that only his voice might die.
kikokikokiko 3 hours ago|||
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tsimionescu 2 hours ago|||
He had every possible chance to argue his case, both against culpability and then against the specific damages, but both he and the lawyers he hired refused to do so. This 1.4b dollars was not a particularly harsh judgment coming down from the establishment (note that the establishment is the president Jones was a paid campaign member for), it was the result of his implicit acceptance of every claim the Snady Hook parents made.
LarsKrimi 3 hours ago|||
What would instead have been a reasonable punishment?

Either he truly believed that the kids at Sandy Hook were actors, or he was using it as part of his grift and making money of it.

As far as I can tell he has not reversed his stance on it

hagbard_c 3 hours ago|||
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blks 2 hours ago|||
You should read how this particularly huge settlement was achieved. It’s on Alex Jones for refusing to participate in the legal debate, contemning the court, refusing discovery, et cetera.

With better legal defence he may have to pay much and much less.

hagbard_c 3 hours ago|||
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defrost 3 hours ago|||
As a drive by reader that votes, I can guess why you copped a few whacks;

The tone is off and it appears to carry the implication that you might believe that none of the above (Jones, Piker, Owens) should be landed with fines despite on the face of it saying the opposite.

A cleaner comment would be better; just explain what it is that Piker has done that is equivilant to Jones' multi decade harrassment of the Sandi Hook parents, ditto Owens.

( for record, I'm non-USAian and unfamiliar with either Piker or Owens )

tsimionescu 2 hours ago||||
Your comment was bad because you don't know the context of Jones' case and how the penalty was arrived at, and are thus extrapolating without any merit to other people.

Neither Hassan Piker nor Candace Owens, nor any other of the many inflammatory voices on the left or right of the new media ecosystem, have done anything remotely close to the type of harassment that Alex Jones exposed the Sandy Hook victims to. Directly accusing grieving parents and children of being completely fake paid "crisis actors", again and again, with images and "analysis" and so on, is beyond anything another media personality has had the poor taste and temerity to try - perhaps in history, certainly in America.

Even then, the only reason the judgement ended up at such a gigantic number is that Alex Jones and his lawyers refused to argue their case to any extent, and in fact directly attacked and antagonized the court and the judge. They lost the case through summary judgement after repeated refusals to follow the normal procedural rules or even to show up in court. Then, they repeated the same refusal to participate or argue their case during the damages settlement, again forcing the court to simply award the amount requested by the plaintiffs, which is always set to a huge number as a negotiating tactic.

So no, the fact that someone argues that Alex Jones deserved this punishment fully is not in any way in conflict with believing that Hassan or Candace Owens or any other new media personality deserves anything similar.

hackable_sand 2 hours ago||||
Not interesting
tokai 2 hours ago|||
Adds nothing, inflammatory in tone, missing the point of discussion. If you weren't grayed out something would be serious wrong with this site.
rob74 3 hours ago|||
> 5 will be crazy cucko insane shit, 4 will be common sense american conservative talking points

If you ask me, it's getting harder and harder to draw a line between those two categories...

treebeard901 6 hours ago||
Turning into an odd form of a take over. Basically renting it for 3 months to let Tim Heidecker do a few shows??
mellosouls 7 hours ago||
Editorialized title. It has a plan to take over that will need approval. Lots of non-paywalled coverage that would be better links, eg:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/apr/20/the-onion-al...

See previous discussion linked in sibling as well.

onetokeoverthe 6 hours ago|
[dead]
razorbeamz 2 days ago||
I hope Dan and Jordan can get the desk like they've always wanted.
treebeard901 6 hours ago|
I'm concerned they won't know what to do without Alex. Already going back over shows from 2006...
troutwine 14 minutes ago||
They’ve bounced around in time — and across InfoWars adjacent shows — for a good chunk of their run so far. I suspect they’ll be okay. Worst case the world suddenly becomes much kinder and gentler and there’s no new content being made in their wheelhouse, which seems like a win still.

Also, Jones has already set up a new media company he totally doesn’t own, no sir. He’ll move his operation when he finally loses InfoWars.

qwertytyyuu 5 hours ago||
No way, i can't believe it actually happened! I would have though alex would though alex and his goons would have managed to stop it
kdheiwns 3 hours ago|
Not sure if it even matters since Alex Jones is just going to keep doing what he's doing.

Judgements demanding he pay billions keep coming out and he just says he's not paying, and nobody has forced him to either. Even if infowars' brand changes hands, that's the extent of it.

gafferongames 43 minutes ago|
brb. Turning my gold into piss
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