Wonderful news. I'm glad their CEO recognizes the great value of CEOs. My only worry is that this acquisition makes Global Tetraeder so large that it attracts the attention of those pesky EU bureaucrats, who will want to split it up into multiple imperfect solids.
They'd better think twice as long as Ted Kaczynski remains on The Onions editorial board[1], he also knows a few things about splitting things into multiple solids.
The actual CEO, Ben Collins, has been running The Onion for a short while and his background was as a reporter for NBC. He covered a lot of internet topics very, very well (IMO).
> My only worry is that this acquisition makes Global Tetraeder so large that it attracts the attention of those pesky EU bureaucrats, who will want to split it up into multiple imperfect solids.
Based on what previous in-real-life examples is this a realistic worry? AFAIK, "EU bureaucrats" haven't broken up a single US-based company before so seems like a weird thing to be worried about.
"Much like family members, our brands are abstract nodes of wealth, interchangeable assets for their patriarch to absorb and discard according to the opaque whims of the market. And just like family members, our brands regard one another with mutual suspicion and malice."
On a whim, I decided to peek at the InfoWars homepage. At this moment, I cannot determine which of the headlines are genuine InfoWars content and which are the product of Onion writers. (I assume it's genuine due to the recency of the sale closing?)
they are shutting us down even without a court order this morning
He seems surprised. I guess losing a multi-year court case, being fined $1,500,000,000.00 by a jury, and going through bankruptcy court wasn't enough of a warning?
Part of the MO of these outrage merchants is that they simultaneously claim that the government perpetrate the most vile acts (killing children, poisoning the water, false flag attacks) while also acting outraged and surprised that they'd do something as mundane as ignore a procedure.
The auction included all of the InfoWars and several associated corporations' assets, including the studio and the supplements business. At one point the settlement administrator was trying to get Alex's Twitter handle.
I believe he's been doing some half-ass scheming to create essentially the same company but in his parents' name, and I doubt he has a problem getting listeners back.
Perhaps The Onion should ask - who gets most promotion of this?
Well, we’re all talking about the onion. And I, personally, haven’t read onion content in a long, long while. So this kind of put them back on the radar for me.
But I could be one of only a few people who fell out of onion readership?
More likely is that they believe the next four years will provide them a lot of comedy fodder and they’re setting their pieces early. For them the election is likely to be pretty good for business.
I believe that the current state of play is that Jones has to pay $1.1bn damages even post bankruptcy so maybe any future successes will lead to money for the Sandyhook families. I certainly hope so.
Ironically he may live longer to earn more for them - he'll never be able to afford a cigar again.
Hmm NBC seems to imply that they purchased "Free Speech Systems", which is the parent company for the entire operation. Of course, who knows what they'll actually get other than the domain and copyrights -- Jones will just move all the physical assets into a storage unit/another office and dare them to complain, Guliani-style. Also, who knows if any of these stands for long, anyway; the cases are in state court (Connecticut and Texas) but what's stopping the president from issuing an executive order clearing them? Laws?
Re: "who gets the most promotion", IDK I think it's definitely the new owner of the Onion. Personally speaking, I think we're past the "don't give them attention" stage of fascism, and "they were bought by a satire company" isn't exactly a better rallying cry than Jones has already been spouting during the entire litigation. Plus, I trust them;
The anti-violence organization Everytown for Gun Safety said it will be the exclusive advertiser in The Onion’s new venture as part of a multiyear agreement. John Feinblatt, the group’s president, said in a statement that he hopes to “reach new audiences ready to hold the gun industry accountable for contributing to our nation’s gun violence epidemic.”
> Alex Jones is such a big name and has other channels (x.com, Joe Rogan etc.) that he can easily build a similar site/business under a new domain name.
Maybe but the judgement was for 1B USD. So any profits would probably be garnished away.
Basically, lawfare was used to censor Alex Jones. I wonder if this is a case for the Supreme Court and First Amendment rights?
right, I was reading their comments, I cannot believe it. But hey, if you view the world like that, guys like Alex will always prosper and have a crowd.
He has for some time been telling his listeners to buy supplements from a new company set up in his father's name that is a thin cutout for the one ostensibly run by himself. It seems likely a good lawyer could pierce that corporate veil and go after the new company, but I don't know if that has happened.
That and the defiance, conspiracies, deep state, freedom-fighter verbal diarrhea until the bitter end. You almost get the feeling that he actually believes it all.
I'm hoping that Department Head Rawlings and Jim Anchower will return as contributors. When did T. Herman Zweibel pass the reins to Bryce P. Tetraeder?
Truly a great piece of satirical writing on The Onion. Just one example:
> With a shrewd mix of delusional paranoia and dubious anti-aging nutrition hacks, they strive to make life both scarier and longer for everyone, a commendable goal.
"They are a true unicorn, capable of simultaneously inspiring public support for billionaires and stoking outrage at an inept federal state that can assassinate JFK but can’t even put a man on the Moon."
Founded in 1999 on the heels of the Satanic “panic” and growing steadily ever since, InfoWars has distinguished itself as an invaluable tool for brainwashing and controlling the masses. With a shrewd mix of delusional paranoia and dubious anti-aging nutrition hacks, they strive to make life both scarier and longer for everyone, a commendable goal. They are a true unicorn, capable of simultaneously inspiring public support for billionaires and stoking outrage at an inept federal state that can assassinate JFK but can’t even put a man on the Moon.
> Somewhat ironic since The Onion could be brought down in the same way by defamation lawsuits.
Unlikely.
It's worth remembering that Jones was never actually tried for defamation. He instead received a default judgment. In the US, both sides of a civil case have the right to a fair and speedy trial. If there's delays, you had better have a good reason for them and they need to fit the rules of procedure.
Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems, more-or-less refused to participate in the trial. The Knowledge Fight podcast has some episodes dealing with the discovery and deposition process for the suits, with actual deposition audio. I'm not a lawyer but it was absolutely brutal to listen to how ill-prepared Jones, his employees, and his representatives were. They were submitting Wikipedia articles about false flags as evidence, had a comprehensive background check on one of the parents that was in FSS records that no one could seem to explain the presence of, and generally didn't comply with other discovery requests.
The end result of this is that his life's work has been reduced to a satire and he is likely financially hobbled for the rest of his life.
For The Onion to have the same fate, they would have to basically disregard every single common-sense rule regarding what you should do when you're sued.
Good! It should be. Alex Jones is a ghoul making money from dead school shooting victims. Anything that embarrasses him is entitled to as much glee as it wants.
Er... the Onion is satire. Satire is not defamation because no one with any sense thinks it's true. InfoWars was not satire. Rather, it constantly lied.
You have to step extremely far over the line to be brought down by such a lawsuit, particularly if you have money to spend on legal defense (as Jones did previously, or the Onion does today). Jones went over that line one time too many, in a country where a lot of people strongly dislike him. It's like being Martin Shkreli, the system* is going to keep targeting you and eventually get you (entirely warranted) on one of your legal infractions. The more you're a jerk and stick your head up prominently, the more you're going to draw counter attacks to your behavior by the varied masses.
* the system referring to the vast combination of peoples: politicians, legal, monied interests, lobbyists, news media, corporations, journalists, agitators, whatever, et al
The funniest thing would be to keep running the site as-is but swap out the insanity for stuff that reads like insanity but is legit or morally sound. The audience might not notice, and could (IMHO) easily be duped into supporting good causes!
Yep. Insert little-known stories that are documented conspiracies that aren't hypotheticals similar to the fine content of DamnInteresting. Be sure to use lots of graphics and editoralizing/clickbait headlines.
keep running the site as-is but swap out the insanity for stuff that reads like insanity but is legit or morally sound.
Sounds like that's sort of what's happening:
"The publication plans to reintroduce Infowars in January as a parody of itself, mocking “weird internet personalities” like Mr. Jones who traffic in misinformation and health supplements, Ben Collins, the chief executive of The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron, said in an interview."
> The audience might not notice, and could (IMHO) easily be duped into supporting good causes!
What a deranged fantasy this is and yet how often it shows up. The audience will notice. Those who don't and eventually discover your duplicity will never forgive you for it. What you propose is disgusting and amoral, as it has no value, and is designed to mollify yourself by bulling people you clearly perceive as being beneath you.
Interesting. They should.. but Bksy is bouncing between 15 to 133 new users per second at the moment, and they are on bare metal. There is major service degradation at the moment. Pour one out for their team.
> Had a crazy theory that a school shooting was fake.
This is absolutely not what happened. Jones is a grifter, and was never a journalist. He had no journalistic aspirations, and peddled exclusively in inane conspiracy theories either crafted personally or adopted selectively to inspire a constant state of fear and paranoia in a particular type of vulnerable person while aggressively channeling their anxieties into purchases of his prepper gear and phony health supplement business. This is a rare case of such a fraudster managing to accrue enough ire and attention that legal charges stuck and sunk him for the harm caused by one of his many careless lies. There are many like him who continue on with much the same strategy, some of whom have gained enough power and influence through their actions that they are now effectively untouchable by the legal system.
I doubt that the SH families will receive the kind of money they could have had if they accepted Jones' original offer. Their lawyers made it clear they were in it not for their clients' interest but for their own political agenda.
Did the original offer include shutting down Infowars? Of not I expect many of them feel they got plenty more that whatever cash Jones was offering. There is more to this life than money.
The NPR article conveys that this was more than just a very clever stunt
> "The Connecticut families agreed to forgo a portion of their recovery to increase the overall value of The Onion's bid, enabling its success," according to their lawyers. ... Jones was hoping a bidder ideologically aligned with him would have bought Infowars and hired him back to keep doing his show.
Yeah, this seems like a clear-cut "We want justice, not money" decision. We don't know how much the families gave up (could be a little, could be significant), but whatever it was was the difference between Infowars remaining what it is or utterly destroying Infowars' credibility.
Because now the Wikipedia entry is going to say "parody site" at the top.
> We don't know how much the families gave up (could be a little, could be significant)
It's hard to put yourself in someone else's shoes but as a parent I can imagine the money not playing an important factor at all in this. Money would hopefully be the least of my worries.
"InfoWars was an American far-right[2] conspiracy theory[3] and fake news website[1] created by Alex Jones.[36][37] It was founded in 1999, and operated under Free Speech Systems LLC."
This is actually one of the dumbest stunts I'd ever seen. InfoWars is nothing without Alex Jones. They've wasted all their money since Alex will start a new project and his viewership will move.
I don’t understand what you think they want out of this. They don’t want to keep infowars the way it was, nor are they trying to make money off of it. Do you think their goal was to buy it, keep it running without any changes, and keep extracting money from its previous audience?
There's tonnes of worthless merchandise and supplements of a dubious nature which The Onion, the least expected of all possible buyers, now has to find a use for. My first suggestion would be melting down all of the 500% marked up gold bars[0] and make a one-time-run charity auction collectible for the Sandy Hook families. Or upcycling all the paper in Alex Jones' books [1] into paper mache, and use it to make globes, to really stick it to the globalists!
> As for the vitamins and supplements, we are halting their sale immediately. Utilitarian logic dictates that if we can extend even one CEO’s life by 10 minutes, diluting these miracle elixirs for public consumption is an unethical waste. Instead, we plan to collect the entire stock of the InfoWars warehouses into a large vat and boil the contents down into a single candy bar–sized omnivitamin that one executive (I will not name names) may eat in order to increase his power and perhaps become immortal.*
I don't know man, it's not like the dude caused the Sandy Hook massacre, just take this win and let the victims rest in peace. Let the Onion do it's things and cut ties.
They are re-labled existing products that are sold in other places, and unironically already-recognized, before being re-labled by InfoWars, as very high quality.
If you're gonna criticize InfoWars you have my 100% support in your right to do so, but try not to post out of your ass. This is HackerNews, not Reddit.
There was a past disclosure where lead was found[0] within an in-house product. Buzzfeed did a story about sending some products to a lab and you're right they're safe existing products[1] only with Infowars' own exaggerated marketing labeled on.
I had the goldbugs and silver bugs in mind- they'd be more than willing to pay exorbitant markup, with the feel-good ennui of it going towards a good cause. These were $100 for a 1/10 gram at the time of writing and now are sold out. Coincidence???
Referring to Jones as "...the hapless owner of InfoWars (a forgettable man with an already-forgotten name)..." in the announcement is a masterstroke given Jones' ridiculous ego.
I hope Jones is never named on the new site, but frequently and flagrantly referenced in a manner like this.
I hope for the opposite, Jones has so much video and audio content available cloning him digitally and shoving an AI generated fist, ahem, somewhere, and using his likeness as the satire would be cathartic. Better yet he himself argued in court that the person live on Info Wars is a character inseparable from the brand.
Isn't that illegal? If it isn't, it may become so in the near future as many legislations are working on it.
Satire is protected in the US and many other countries, but "cloning" a person using AI implies that it makes difficult to distinguish between the real person and the clone. I guess it can pass if it is obvious that it is indeed satire, but that would be risky.
Maybe it could be remediated by having him wear a clown hat or something.
I hate to burst everyone’s bubble, but this is fake news. This deal is not final. The judge in the liquidation case is holding an evidentiary hearing next week to understand how and why secret bidding was set up and why it was not open to the general public. Sounds like a BIG loss for The Onion, not to mention the potential defamation cases that could arise from news outlets publishing an unverified story about a sale that isn’t final.
It's not fake news. The onion did indeed win the auction.
What remains to be seen is if the sandyhook parents are allowed to forego some of their claim against Jones to secure the purchase, which frankly I can't see why they couldn't.
The auction is there to settle Jones' debts and some of his largest debtors are willing to release some of his nondischargeable debt for Infowars.
He owes some of the family's 100 million dollars. The next highest bid was 3.5 million. The sandyhook families have the leverage particularly in this case.
Oh, and not for nothing, the second place bidder was the guy running Jones' new supplement company which mysteriously has 3.5 million to burn after being open for about a month.
The onion did not win the auction. The trustee selected the onion's offer despite it not being the highest. The judge is going to toss that out. Jone's people are also saying the auction (other than selecting the winner) wasn't conducted in accordance with the judge's order.
Most likely the sale will be awarded to the Jones-friendly high bidder.
I posted the full audio of the 14 Nov 2024 hearing with the bankruptcy judge so you can hear all sides of the story, and the judge's reaction. Apologies it's on the Tweeter/Xitter.
Their bubble revels in sadistic glee at the pain and humiliation of a man that they hate for reasons that they do not understand themselves. Their bubble deserves to be burst.
I really can’t imagine a better steward. Truly amazing. I doubt there’s any way to undo all the damage that has been done, but at least we’ll get some cathartic laughs out of it all.
Readit News
Alex Jones response: https://x.com/RealAlexJones/status/1857058831135645739
[1] https://i.imgur.com/iNDpZt2.png
Based on what previous in-real-life examples is this a realistic worry? AFAIK, "EU bureaucrats" haven't broken up a single US-based company before so seems like a weird thing to be worried about.
Dead Comment
Glorious.
It would be a massive undertaking but wouldn't it be funny if the savior of modern media turned out to be a student newspaper from Madison, Wisconsin?
Dead Comment
He seems surprised. I guess losing a multi-year court case, being fined $1,500,000,000.00 by a jury, and going through bankruptcy court wasn't enough of a warning?
Why not call it one or the other?
Alex Jones is such a big name and has other channels (x.com, Joe Rogan etc.) that he can easily build a similar site/business under a new domain name.
Perhaps The Onion should ask - who gets most promotion of this?
I believe he's been doing some half-ass scheming to create essentially the same company but in his parents' name, and I doubt he has a problem getting listeners back.
Well, we’re all talking about the onion. And I, personally, haven’t read onion content in a long, long while. So this kind of put them back on the radar for me.
But I could be one of only a few people who fell out of onion readership?
More likely is that they believe the next four years will provide them a lot of comedy fodder and they’re setting their pieces early. For them the election is likely to be pretty good for business.
I believe that the current state of play is that Jones has to pay $1.1bn damages even post bankruptcy so maybe any future successes will lead to money for the Sandyhook families. I certainly hope so.
Ironically he may live longer to earn more for them - he'll never be able to afford a cigar again.
I think the idea is the US’ terrible gun situation
Re: "who gets the most promotion", IDK I think it's definitely the new owner of the Onion. Personally speaking, I think we're past the "don't give them attention" stage of fascism, and "they were bought by a satire company" isn't exactly a better rallying cry than Jones has already been spouting during the entire litigation. Plus, I trust them;
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/onion-wins-alex-jones-i...Maybe but the judgement was for 1B USD. So any profits would probably be garnished away.
Basically, lawfare was used to censor Alex Jones. I wonder if this is a case for the Supreme Court and First Amendment rights?
> With a shrewd mix of delusional paranoia and dubious anti-aging nutrition hacks, they strive to make life both scarier and longer for everyone, a commendable goal.
See also https://reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/ if you haven't yet.
Deleted Comment
Deleted Comment
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/not-funny-onion-buys-inf...
Perfect
Unlikely.
It's worth remembering that Jones was never actually tried for defamation. He instead received a default judgment. In the US, both sides of a civil case have the right to a fair and speedy trial. If there's delays, you had better have a good reason for them and they need to fit the rules of procedure.
Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems, more-or-less refused to participate in the trial. The Knowledge Fight podcast has some episodes dealing with the discovery and deposition process for the suits, with actual deposition audio. I'm not a lawyer but it was absolutely brutal to listen to how ill-prepared Jones, his employees, and his representatives were. They were submitting Wikipedia articles about false flags as evidence, had a comprehensive background check on one of the parents that was in FSS records that no one could seem to explain the presence of, and generally didn't comply with other discovery requests.
The end result of this is that his life's work has been reduced to a satire and he is likely financially hobbled for the rest of his life.
For The Onion to have the same fate, they would have to basically disregard every single common-sense rule regarding what you should do when you're sued.
Good! It should be. Alex Jones is a ghoul making money from dead school shooting victims. Anything that embarrasses him is entitled to as much glee as it wants.
Don't want to be sued by defamation don't make BS about people in a fragile position. It's that simple
* the system referring to the vast combination of peoples: politicians, legal, monied interests, lobbyists, news media, corporations, journalists, agitators, whatever, et al
Deleted Comment
> Hi everyone.
> The Onion, with the help of the Sandy Hook families, has purchased InfoWars.
> We are planning on making it a very funny, very stupid website.
> We have retained the services of some Onion and Clickhole Hall of Famers to pull this off.
> I can't wait to show you what we have cooked up.
Next post: [1]
> Does anybody need millions of dollars worth of supplements?
[0] https://bsky.app/profile/bencollins.bsky.social/post/3law22g...
[1] https://bsky.app/profile/bencollins.bsky.social/post/3law23r...
- Radium girls
- Eugenics experiments
- Forced sterilization
- ~600 Tennessee sober "drunk driving" arrests
Sounds like that's sort of what's happening:
"The publication plans to reintroduce Infowars in January as a parody of itself, mocking “weird internet personalities” like Mr. Jones who traffic in misinformation and health supplements, Ben Collins, the chief executive of The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron, said in an interview."
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/14/business/media/alex-jones...
What a deranged fantasy this is and yet how often it shows up. The audience will notice. Those who don't and eventually discover your duplicity will never forgive you for it. What you propose is disgusting and amoral, as it has no value, and is designed to mollify yourself by bulling people you clearly perceive as being beneath you.
Crazy bullshit is only tempting if it's part of your engrieved group. A clever roleplay won't have the spiritual depravtivy needed.
Dead Comment
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:x4qyokjtdzgl7gmqhsw4ajqj/po...
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:x4qyokjtdzgl7gmqhsw4ajqj/po...
it's probably the first site I've manually added to my dns blacklist.
Dude tried a career in journalism.
Had a crazy theory that a school shooting was fake.
School shooting wasn't fake.
Dude doesn't say "I'm sorry, my bad, I'm retiring from journalism", but goes down fighting.
Looks good to me.
> Had a crazy theory that a school shooting was fake.
This is absolutely not what happened. Jones is a grifter, and was never a journalist. He had no journalistic aspirations, and peddled exclusively in inane conspiracy theories either crafted personally or adopted selectively to inspire a constant state of fear and paranoia in a particular type of vulnerable person while aggressively channeling their anxieties into purchases of his prepper gear and phony health supplement business. This is a rare case of such a fraudster managing to accrue enough ire and attention that legal charges stuck and sunk him for the harm caused by one of his many careless lies. There are many like him who continue on with much the same strategy, some of whom have gained enough power and influence through their actions that they are now effectively untouchable by the legal system.
Isn't it that already?
And how would The Onion know what funny actually is? Their content hasn't been that for well over a decade now.
Also, I don’t think their agenda is political, it is personal.
> "The Connecticut families agreed to forgo a portion of their recovery to increase the overall value of The Onion's bid, enabling its success," according to their lawyers. ... Jones was hoping a bidder ideologically aligned with him would have bought Infowars and hired him back to keep doing his show.
https://www.npr.org/2024/11/14/nx-s1-5189399/alex-jones-auct...
https://global-tetrahedron.com/
https://web.archive.org/web/20000229143934/http://www.infowa...
Because now the Wikipedia entry is going to say "parody site" at the top.
It's hard to put yourself in someone else's shoes but as a parent I can imagine the money not playing an important factor at all in this. Money would hopefully be the least of my worries.
"InfoWars was an American far-right[2] conspiracy theory[3] and fake news website[1] created by Alex Jones.[36][37] It was founded in 1999, and operated under Free Speech Systems LLC."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InfoWars
So, if any, where's the value? In InfoWars, or with Jones? I.e., can't he just go into a new venture, or go onto someone's payroll?
And they got all of the stuff and the brands. The chemical brands, the infowars brands, all of it.
[0] https://www.infowarsstore.com/24-karat-999-pure-gold-collect...
[1] https://www.infowarsstore.com/infowars-media/books/the-great...
Or a monument / memorial to the deceased, in the hopes that the truth would outlive Jones's lies.
They are re-labled existing products that are sold in other places, and unironically already-recognized, before being re-labled by InfoWars, as very high quality.
If you're gonna criticize InfoWars you have my 100% support in your right to do so, but try not to post out of your ass. This is HackerNews, not Reddit.
[0] https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/prop65/notices/2017-02319.pd...
[1] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/charliewarzel/we-sent-a...
They've got $1.5billion. Probably don't need the gold as well. There might be equally valid causes with less funds.
No, they've got a judgement on paper for $1.5 billion. This is part of the process of actually getting that money.
I hope Jones is never named on the new site, but frequently and flagrantly referenced in a manner like this.
Satire is protected in the US and many other countries, but "cloning" a person using AI implies that it makes difficult to distinguish between the real person and the clone. I guess it can pass if it is obvious that it is indeed satire, but that would be risky.
Maybe it could be remediated by having him wear a clown hat or something.
Source: https://x.com/behizytweets/status/1857195724242329997
What remains to be seen is if the sandyhook parents are allowed to forego some of their claim against Jones to secure the purchase, which frankly I can't see why they couldn't.
The auction is there to settle Jones' debts and some of his largest debtors are willing to release some of his nondischargeable debt for Infowars.
He owes some of the family's 100 million dollars. The next highest bid was 3.5 million. The sandyhook families have the leverage particularly in this case.
Oh, and not for nothing, the second place bidder was the guy running Jones' new supplement company which mysteriously has 3.5 million to burn after being open for about a month.
Most likely the sale will be awarded to the Jones-friendly high bidder.
https://x.com/magazedia/status/1857962924762898502
But then again, you clearly seem to have a dog in this fight.
The correctly should be something like "The Onion is attempting to buy Infowars"
Deleted Comment
Dead Comment
https://theonion.com/sources-hackers-vandalized-drudge-repor...
You're probably right. But here's my alternates list:
- The Simpsons writing team
- Jimmy Kimmel (maybe)
- Conan O'Brien
- Stephen Colbert
- a deep fake of Alex Jones, scripted by a bunch of giggling 6th grade boys