Headlines from the satirical website the Onion on Thursday included: “New Dating Site Suggests People You Already Know But Thought You Were Too Good For,” “Trump Boys Have Slap Fight Over Who Gets to Run Foreign Policy Meetings,” and “Here’s Why I Decided to Buy Infowars.”
Only one has the ring of truth, sort of.
The bylined author of the Infowars article, Bryce P. Tetraeder, doesn’t actually exist. The Onion doesn’t plan to invest in business school scholarships for promising cult leaders either. However, the Onion’s purchase of Alex Jones’ conspiracy-theory-saturated media empire at a bankruptcy auction, tied to lawsuits by the families of Sandy Hook shooting victims, is very real. This move aims to fight falsehoods with humor, marking an unbelievable twist in an already surreal year. Late Thursday, an element of doubt was introduced when the judge in Jones’ bankruptcy case ordered a hearing for next week on how the auction was conducted.
On Thursday, the Onion immediately shut down Infowars, announcing plans to relaunch it in January as a parody of conspiracy theorists. “Our goal in a couple of years is for people to think of Infowars as the funniest and dumbest website that exists,” said Ben Collins, the Onion’s CEO. “It was previously the dumbest website that exists.”
This acquisition concludes a contentious chapter tied to Jones’ false claims that the 2012 Sandy Hook shootings were a hoax. The purchase, for an undisclosed sum, was backed by Sandy Hook families who were awarded nearly $1.5 billion in lawsuits against Jones. The new Infowars will satirize the theories Jones advanced, theories that were so absurd they could have seemed satirical if they hadn’t caused real-life harm. According to Collins, this development ends one tentacle of a loose network of fear-based media content creators.
“They’ve had a free pass to this point, and we don’t think that’s fair,” Collins said. At the very least, the Onion aims to return some fun to the Internet to offset years of doomscrolling.
In Collins, who once covered misinformation for NBC News, the new venture has a leader uniquely suited to its goals, said Dale Beran, who made this year’s Netflix documentary, “The Anti-Social Network.” The Onion, founded as a newspaper in 1988, has gone through several ownership changes and was purchased earlier this year by a group including Jeff Lawson, co-founder of the software company Twilio. Beran remarked that it “feels like there is new life breathed into it.”
A well-executed satirical site on conspiracy theories and their proponents could meet a historical moment much like comedian Stephen Colbert did with “The Colbert Report,” which mockingly mirrored conservative television talk shows.
As for what will happen when some of Jones’ casual fans log on to Infowars in a few months only to find the Onion’s new creation, Beran suggested there’s unlikely to be much overlap between people attracted by conspiracy theories and those who enjoy mocking them.
Indeed, conspiracy theories about the Onion’s purchase of Infowars began cropping up online just hours after it was announced. “There’s no chance this outlet which hasn’t been relevant in years was able to afford this purchase on their own. Who was really behind this?” the website Zeee Media, which bills itself as “one of the most trusted, uncensored sources of information in Australia,” posted online.
Jones himself hurriedly posted a video aimed at his fans on Thursday, calling the purchase “a total attack on free speech” and claiming “the deep state is completely out of control.”
There is an impact any time a prominent website that traffics in misinformation is shut down. Still, the business model of reaching people who crave outrage remains viable, said Beran. Another expert in misinformation suggested Jones will quickly adapt, and his fans will follow him.
“As long as there are people willing to tune in, he will find new outlets,” said Yotam Ophir, head of the Media Effects, Misinformation and Extremism Lab at the University of Buffalo. “If anything, the Onion trolling and the court cases against him will just make some of his most dedicated fans even more sure of his righteousness, seeing him as a martyr for free speech.”
At the very least, the Onion’s purchase offered a token of relief for liberals, particularly following Donald Trump’s election victory and the GOP sweep in Congress. “This is bad karma turned good,” wrote Timothy W. Larson, who describes himself as “an unabashed progressive.” “I love it.”
