If we can go out on any high note for 2024, this is a good option

November 14, 2024 6:19 AM

The Onion buys Alex Jones' Infowars!
posted by Kitteh (126 comments total)

If this had been reported by the Onion itself, I would have assumed it was a joke.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 6:22 AM on November 14, 2024 [42 favorites]

If this had been reported by the Onion itself, I would have assumed it was a joke.

I-Write-Essays, it was!

Here's why I decided to buy InfoWars
posted by It is regrettable that at 6:24 AM on November 14, 2024 [16 favorites]

NY Times link I can't read, but:
Here’s Why I Decided To Buy ‘InfoWars’

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.

(So it's true? I think so but have been fooled before.)
EDIT: jinx!
posted by Glinn at 6:25 AM on November 14, 2024 [10 favorites]

This is literally the funniest possible thing that could have happened and I love it so much.
posted by robotmachine at 6:28 AM on November 14, 2024 [18 favorites]

Area man buys InfoWars
posted by chavenet at 6:30 AM on November 14, 2024 [55 favorites]

Finally, an ethical source for my BrainForce+!
posted by pattern juggler at 6:30 AM on November 14, 2024 [4 favorites]

the current political climate is aching, like a power bottom, for the hot thrusting tongue of righteous mockery
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:31 AM on November 14, 2024 [2 favorites]

YES....HA HA HA...YES!
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:33 AM on November 14, 2024 [19 favorites]

Ben Collins, Onion CEO: Does anybody need millions of dollars worth of supplements?
posted by mittens at 6:37 AM on November 14, 2024 [17 favorites]

My greatest fear here is that InfoWars fans won't know the difference.
posted by zaixfeep at 6:38 AM on November 14, 2024 [7 favorites]

that's not the fear, that's the hope. sowing dis-disinformation amongst the idiotariat is aspirational, it's praxis
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:40 AM on November 14, 2024 [34 favorites]

"The publication plans to reintroduce Infowars in January as a parody of itself."

I assume that means that they will leave it unchanged.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 6:42 AM on November 14, 2024 [33 favorites]

I mean... this is the confluence of a bunch of really terrible things (right-wing dis-info-sphere, the monetization of news media, capitalism being touted as the solution to everything, lawsuit winners needing to spend years tracking down their money), but is itself a great thing. To me, it's not so much "many wrongs put together make a right" as it is "I wasn't exactly rooting for the T-rex in Jurassic Park, but I sure did cheer when it showed up and the end and ate those fucking raptors."
posted by Mayor West at 6:44 AM on November 14, 2024 [18 favorites]

Splendid!

Am I the only one who remembers the 'whitehouse.org' site back during the W era? More mean satire that punches up is better.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 6:44 AM on November 14, 2024 [11 favorites]

Ha! Brilliant!
posted by doctornemo at 6:44 AM on November 14, 2024

My greatest fear here is that InfoWars fans won't know the difference.

Well, Alex Jones does need a job now...
posted by mittens at 6:48 AM on November 14, 2024

NY Times link I can't read

unlocked
posted by doctornemo at 6:49 AM on November 14, 2024 [1 favorite]

More from Onion CEO Ben Collins, (who notably used to cover disinfo for NBC News):
"You better fucking subscribe to The Onion. This is the kind of thing we will do with your money.

It allowed us to buy InfoWars. Now help us staff it."
posted by mcstayinskool at 6:50 AM on November 14, 2024 [20 favorites]

The Onion declined to disclose the price it paid for Infowars and its assets, including its production studio and diet supplement business.

I really hope they know what they're doing, because they might have bought a huge lawsuit liability. I completely expect right-wing billionaires to suddenly become interested in holding the supplements industry to account, just as they suddenly became interested in animal welfare and Peanut the squirrel.
posted by AlSweigart at 6:57 AM on November 14, 2024 [5 favorites]

This feels like an event about four dominoes in on that chain of increasingly large dominoes meme.
posted by lucidium at 6:58 AM on November 14, 2024 [10 favorites]

August J. Pollak: If only there was a meme associated with The Onion that could apply to this, perhaps a distinct yet overt icon of a person’s devilish glee at the events unfolding before them. Alas, we are not blessed enough as a society for something so perfect to exist
posted by mittens at 6:58 AM on November 14, 2024 [5 favorites]

> You better fucking subscribe to The Onion. This is the kind of thing we will do with your money.

You know... This is the most convincing ad pitch I've ever been confronted with. I think they've got me.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 7:01 AM on November 14, 2024 [26 favorites]

“The Arc of the Moral Universe is Long, But it Bends Toward Justice.”
posted by Frayed Knot at 7:02 AM on November 14, 2024 [3 favorites]

I was just thinking that I should subscribe to some print publications, both the support journalism and reduce doom scrolling. It looks like the onion is first on that list.
posted by CostcoCultist at 7:05 AM on November 14, 2024 [5 favorites]

https://membership.theonion.com/

I signed up for a membership. The Onion has been the only mainstream newspaper to consistently be critical of Israel's genocide of Palestinians. The Onion is something that should exist.
posted by AlSweigart at 7:05 AM on November 14, 2024 [24 favorites]

so we're voting for the Onion Party in 2028?

because in one move they've shown the kind of attitude that the Democratic Party couldn't find if they paid 10X the consultants to lead them to it
posted by ginger.beef at 7:06 AM on November 14, 2024 [18 favorites]

The next interesting thing is whether they will sue Jones and his father for the blatant shifting of business assets away from Free Speech Systems (the IW parent company) over the last 4 or so months….

Jones has bragged about it, repeatedly, on air.
posted by GenjiandProust at 7:08 AM on November 14, 2024 [4 favorites]

Getting my news from The Onion for the foreseeable future feels like a logical conclusion in this timeline.
posted by EvaDestruction at 7:11 AM on November 14, 2024 [7 favorites]

If only T. Herman Zweibel had lived to see this day.
posted by phooky at 7:19 AM on November 14, 2024 [29 favorites]

This is briliant and I will subscribe. More like this please.

Those Sandy Hook parents (plus the Onion team) are amazing and resilient and hell hath absolutely no fury like parents who lost their kids being portrayed as conspiracy actors.
posted by warriorqueen at 7:23 AM on November 14, 2024 [10 favorites]

The Onion declined to disclose the price it paid for Infowars and its assets, including its production studio and diet supplement business.

Honestly a little surprised by this, wouldn't publishing the amount be to the benefit of the Sandy Hook parents' collection, to avoid anyone on Jones's side misreporting the sale price? It's not like Jones or anyone working for him deserves the benefit of the doubt.
posted by solotoro at 7:31 AM on November 14, 2024

> You better fucking subscribe to The Onion. This is the kind of thing we will do with your money.

That message being posted on twitter kind of spoils it for me. I like it but I'm not clicking on a twitter link if I can help it.
posted by scottatdrake at 7:34 AM on November 14, 2024 [4 favorites]

I like it but I'm not clicking on a twitter link if I can help it.

Completely fair. FWIW, Ben Collins posts on bluesky, so I'd guess it's there too. There's nothing to see on the link other than the text I reprinted (in hindsight, should not have reflexively posted it as a hyperlink, because F Twitter).

So anyway, here is the membership page at The Onion. I'm going to subscribe, and so should you.
posted by mcstayinskool at 7:42 AM on November 14, 2024 [1 favorite]

not clicking on a twitter link

Also a skeet.
posted by Not A Thing at 7:42 AM on November 14, 2024 [2 favorites]

If only T. Herman Zweibel had lived to see this day.

As well as Herbert “Tha H-Dog” Kornfeld.
posted by TedW at 7:46 AM on November 14, 2024 [13 favorites]

It's so funny that Jones is so toxic he couldn't rustle up a single rich wingnut to win the auction to keep him going. After decades of carrying water for the worst of us, nobody stood up for him in the end. There's a lesson in this
posted by dis_integration at 7:52 AM on November 14, 2024 [13 favorites]

Jean Teasdale lives nearby?
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 7:53 AM on November 14, 2024 [4 favorites]

To be fair, Ben Collins’ twitter name is “follow Ben Collins on bluesky” and I feel like we’re still at a point where media figures have to be on Twitter professionally, but collins at least is actively trying to move us away from that.
posted by Jon_Evil at 8:02 AM on November 14, 2024 [12 favorites]

You better fucking subscribe to The Onion. This is the kind of thing we will do with your money.

If we didn't already get a print subscription the day they announced they were going back into print, you better believe we'd get one now.
posted by tclark at 8:04 AM on November 14, 2024

My mefi nom de plume, M.C. Stay in Skool, is one of the names they used on a caption in the recurring "Faces in the Crowd" section of the paper, where they would ask a question to random people on the street and they would respond as only random people on the street would. For about 20 years they used the same 6 photos each week.
posted by mcstayinskool at 8:04 AM on November 14, 2024 [9 favorites]

Honestly a little surprised by this, wouldn't publishing the amount be to the benefit of the Sandy Hook parents' collection, to avoid anyone on Jones's side misreporting the sale price?

Per the Associated Press: "Lawyers for the families in the Connecticut lawsuit said they worked with The Onion to try to acquire Infowars." So should be all good on that front!
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 8:17 AM on November 14, 2024 [11 favorites]

From the article:

“We thought this would be a hilarious joke,” Mr. Collins said. “This is going to be our answer to this no-guardrails world where there are no gatekeepers and everything’s kind of insane.”

works for me
posted by philip-random at 8:20 AM on November 14, 2024 [10 favorites]

The Onion also disclosed that they had approached the GOP and Dem parties to acquire an ownership stake, but both parties confirmed they were already parodies of themselves.
posted by zaixfeep at 8:26 AM on November 14, 2024 [16 favorites]

Part of me says Go Forth Onion, Be Oniony on this shit. But another part of me says, call the people who have turned former sites of fascist oppression into museums and ask them what to do with it? Call the people who turned the police station in Sao Paulo we visited, where leftists and labor organizers had been tortured and killed, into a museum, and see what they'd do with it.
posted by turntraitor at 8:26 AM on November 14, 2024 [5 favorites]

Given that it was the Onion, assumed it was fake.

So good. Fuck that fucking pile of shit.

All I've got right now.
posted by Windopaene at 8:29 AM on November 14, 2024 [4 favorites]

Please please please let the Knowledge Fight guys host it for a while
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 8:32 AM on November 14, 2024 [15 favorites]

My greatest fear here is that InfoWars fans won't know the difference.

For at least a decade I've been chewing on the long-term problem of how to get people - your parents, your friends, your neighbors - off of Fox News. They're addicted and they can't go cold turkey, you can't tell them to just quit, but perhaps some kind of long road aversion therapy is what's needed.

Imagine if The Onion staff took InfoWars and left it alone for now, then slowly started to land the plane in terms of presenting real facts and dissolving conspiracy theories. Imagine if eventually InfoWars presented people with real news and the loyal readers never saw the change. Maybe there's a chance for humanity yet.

Imagine, just imagine, if our entire media landscape was saved by a student newspaper from Madison, WI.
posted by JoeZydeco at 8:32 AM on November 14, 2024 [29 favorites]

> They're addicted and they can't go cold turkey, you can't tell them to just quit, but perhaps some kind of long road aversion therapy is what's needed.

Kind of like the polar opposite of what Musk's been doing with Twitter.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 8:34 AM on November 14, 2024 [5 favorites]

OMG this totally made my day. Never would I have imagined that The Onion would do such an amazing thing...
posted by rambling wanderlust at 8:36 AM on November 14, 2024

Remember when being into conspiracies was more about liking Time Life books about Bigfoot or UFOs? The turn of century brought in Alex Jones and George Noory and the ascendancy of Fox News and then everything turned to shit.
posted by thecjm at 8:39 AM on November 14, 2024 [9 favorites]

Metafilter: Kind of like the polar opposite of what Musk's been doing with Twitter.
posted by Paul Slade at 8:39 AM on November 14, 2024 [10 favorites]

Remember when being into conspiracies was more about liking Time Life books about Bigfoot or UFOs?

Right??? I want to read about Bigfoot or Sir Francis Bacon causing the ghost of a plucked headless chicken to be seen for a period of time in London.

My kingdom for my copy of Time Life I had as a kid! Tell me about the classifications of alien encounters! Tell me about the rains of blood or whatthefuckever happening!

Make Area 51 Great Again
posted by Kitteh at 8:44 AM on November 14, 2024 [3 favorites]

> Imagine if The Onion staff took InfoWars and left it alone for now, then slowly started to land the plane in terms of presenting real facts and dissolving conspiracy theories.

Picturing Jon Stewart emerging from under the InfoWars desk..
posted by Hardcore Poser at 8:48 AM on November 14, 2024 [6 favorites]

is it possible for non-USians to join the Onion? I imagine so, I just haven't found any info on the site that explicitly states that and no way to contact them to ask (that I can see)

anyone from Canada do the thing yet?
posted by ginger.beef at 8:52 AM on November 14, 2024

Their membership signup page says they ship internationally.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 9:10 AM on November 14, 2024 [1 favorite]

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.

posted by Nelson at 9:14 AM on November 14, 2024 [29 favorites]

Jones was hoping a bidder ideologically aligned with him would have bought Infowars and hired him back to keep doing his show.

oh god this makes it so much better
posted by Kitteh at 9:39 AM on November 14, 2024 [7 favorites]

YES... HA HA
HA... YES
posted by Schmucko at 9:43 AM on November 14, 2024 [5 favorites]

Richard Linklater on Casting Alex Jones in 'Waking Life': 'I Just Thought He Was Kind of Funny': "It's crazy, it's insane, but it fits our times."
posted by kliuless at 9:48 AM on November 14, 2024 [2 favorites]

This made me hoot with joy when I read it on Bluesky this morning. I really needed this.

And don't worry about diet supplement lawsuit liability, AlSweigart. Ben Collins has already indicated that he will boil all the supplements down and then form them into one mega-supplement to be fed to exactly one CEO to make him the Supreme Executive Officer (or something like that; Bluesky is down right now due to the ex-Twitter refugee influx).
posted by queensissy at 9:50 AM on November 14, 2024

Schmucko, there's an animated version of that meme image.

Also, it seems appropriate to celebrate today with this animated remix of one of Jones' most infamous rants.
posted by NoxAeternum at 9:50 AM on November 14, 2024 [2 favorites]

Richard Linklater on Casting Alex Jones in 'Waking Life': 'I Just Thought He Was Kind of Funny': "It's crazy, it's insane, but it fits our times."

To which the proper response is "Go fuck yourself, Dick."

One of the ways Jones was enabled was how many people looked at him as "funny" or such, ignoring the harm he was doing.
posted by NoxAeternum at 9:54 AM on November 14, 2024 [8 favorites]

Just to tag onto the Bluesky stuff which has been the other big niche media story this week. Many of the big names over in Twitter have moved over to Bluesky - including Derek the Menwear Guy who you really should follow. I think they are going to have some growing pains but hopefully the app will stay non-algorithmic and sane. Give it a try if you haven’t and then go back on Twitter and you’ll see what a flaming pile of hate that app has become.
posted by misterpatrick at 10:08 AM on November 14, 2024 [3 favorites]

The Onion has just created its own Russell's Paradox for r/NotTheOnion
posted by polymodus at 10:56 AM on November 14, 2024 [1 favorite]

Now if only John Oliver could buy Fox News
posted by gottabefunky at 10:58 AM on November 14, 2024 [19 favorites]

This might be the most #nottheonion thing possible in this universe. A satire singularity.
posted by gottabefunky at 11:00 AM on November 14, 2024

> One of the ways Jones was enabled was how many people looked at him as "funny" or such, ignoring the harm he was doing.

When they filmed Waking Life nobody had ever heard of Alex Jones, and InfoWars was a local public access show in Austin. I'm thinking they probably don't do very thorough background checks for the casting call for minor roles in low budget animated indie films.

We probably don't need to blame Linklater too much.
posted by atbash at 11:20 AM on November 14, 2024 [17 favorites]

It's so funny that Jones is so toxic he couldn't rustle up a single rich wingnut to win the auction to keep him going. After decades of carrying water for the worst of us, nobody stood up for him in the end.

It's akin to how no one ever talks about Rush Limbaugh anymore. Hatemongers and propagandists don't inspire any real loyalty or have any real influence. They feed a certain appetite among the worst of the public, but that public will move on without a backward glance if the Limbaughs and the Joneses die or otherwise cease to deliver the right kind of schtick, or try to stand on principle and convince their followers of something they don't happen to want to believe.

It seems to me there must be a way to leverage that ephemeral quality against them in order to take them down.
posted by orange swan at 11:23 AM on November 14, 2024 [12 favorites]

Global Tetrahedron founder Jeff Twilio is still a billionaire
posted by toodleydoodley at 11:28 AM on November 14, 2024 [1 favorite]

YES... HA HA
HA... YES

I completely forgot the formatting. How can I even call myself a sicko?
posted by RonButNotStupid at 11:28 AM on November 14, 2024 [5 favorites]

We probably don't need to blame Linklater too much.

Seriously, of all the things to be an Internet scold about...

A more interesting treatment was in the TV show Homeland, the character Brett O'Keefe was a thinly-veiled Alex Jones type. Jake Weber played him pretty well. IIRC he ends up recanting and trying to reel in the violent mob he had incited. The real Alex Jones just seems to only have the violent grift, nothing else. Maybe he'll end up being Trump's head of Voice of America or something.
posted by Nelson at 11:44 AM on November 14, 2024 [1 favorite]

Ben Collins on BlueSky:

I would like to reiterate: We own everything. The broadcasting equipment, the supplements, the intellectual property for Brain Force Plus. We are still trying to figure out what to do with it.
posted by dnash at 12:19 PM on November 14, 2024 [5 favorites]

It’s time to pray.
posted by spikeleemajortomdickandharryconnickjrmints at 12:51 PM on November 14, 2024 [2 favorites]

That is a funny thread, dnash. I lol'd at
Do you have the location of the frog children so we can free them
posted by Glinn at 12:52 PM on November 14, 2024 [3 favorites]

My kingdom for my copy of Time Life I had as a kid! Tell me about the classifications of alien encounters! Tell me about the rains of blood or whatthefuckever happening!

Kitteh: start listening to Otherworld. It goes really deep on all this stuff.
posted by slogger at 12:55 PM on November 14, 2024

I love this so much. This is the best thing ever.
posted by hilaryjade at 1:43 PM on November 14, 2024

Maybe he'll end up being Trump's head of Voice of America or something.

Oh, wow, please let's not say that out loud ever again. (But I appreciate the perversity of the thought.)
posted by nobody at 1:44 PM on November 14, 2024 [1 favorite]

What even is reality anymore?
posted by tommasz at 2:04 PM on November 14, 2024 [2 favorites]

The Onion’s Decision to Buy Infowars Started As a Joke It’s their most expensive gag yet. [The Intelligencer]

“The families got pretty excited about it,” Collins said. “It was a real bid that would take it out of Alex’s hands.” Next, he had to make sure it would actually be funny. “We started asking around in our network of hundreds of comedy writers in the Onion Hall of Fame, as we call it, what the new site would look like,” he said. “And we just got really excited.”
posted by RonButNotStupid at 2:10 PM on November 14, 2024 [3 favorites]

> What even is reality anymore?

one of the characteristics of fascism is a population steeped in "questioning reality," so hopefully outlets that seek to underscore fascists' absurdity can help keep us grounded.
posted by kliuless at 2:34 PM on November 14, 2024 [3 favorites]

Looks like the auditions for InfoWars host are already rolling in
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 2:42 PM on November 14, 2024 [1 favorite]

What even is reality anymore?

whatever it f***ing is, I just smashed it with my f***ing toe.
posted by philip-random at 3:17 PM on November 14, 2024 [1 favorite]

Apparently the desk is going to Knowledge Fight, if the inference of a recent BlueSky post is to be believed.

Andy in Kansas is going to be so disappointed.
posted by charred husk at 3:18 PM on November 14, 2024 [2 favorites]

Ugh, why's he got to be so judgey when we were having fun? Bankruptcy judge Christopher Lopez has ordered an evidentiary hearing regarding the InfoWars auction.
posted by EvaDestruction at 3:25 PM on November 14, 2024 [1 favorite]

There were only 2 bidders: The Onion/CT plaintiffs on the one hand and what we infer is the Alex Jones sham group, FUAC.

FUAC. Fuck? Really? A bit on the nose there.
posted by theBigRedKittyPurrs at 3:37 PM on November 14, 2024 [1 favorite]

I suspect that this is the end of Alex Jones. He's not a likeable person, and he is undisciplined, erratic, and prone to overreach in a way that makes him a liability to any platform he might be associated with. Furthermore, as Dan of Knowledge Fight has been pointing out, he used to be a sort of abberent thought leader and now he's just following others. He seems addicted to social media, and, in trying to please that audience, he's just ended up looking weaker. Musk and Carlson seem to have passed him over for greener fields (and I'm not sure Carlson is actually doing that well, he just has a lot of money, so he can do hate as a hobby rather than a job).

If we are very lucky, Jones is going to end up one more voice on X begging Nazis to notice him and shilling increasingly desperately for supplements.

I'd almost pity him, if he hadn't helped create this shithole in which we find ourselves.
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:40 PM on November 14, 2024 [2 favorites]

maybe next they should buy metafilter
posted by glonous keming at 4:11 PM on November 14, 2024 [2 favorites]

I suspect that this is the end of Alex Jones.

surely this
posted by flabdablet at 4:43 PM on November 14, 2024 [4 favorites]

maybe next they should buy metafilter

We are actually nicely not bankrupt!
posted by jessamyn at 5:08 PM on November 14, 2024 [38 favorites]

It;s been a long time since my heart has leapt.
posted by whuppy at 5:50 PM on November 14, 2024 [1 favorite]

Ugh, why's he got to be so judgey when we were having fun? Bankruptcy judge Christopher Lopez has ordered an evidentiary hearing regarding the InfoWars auction.

Yeah, the judge is a Trump judge. Enjoy the news for now, because Infowars is going back to Jones.
posted by dirigibleman at 6:23 PM on November 14, 2024 [1 favorite]

I'm still not convinced this is real, because it sounds like exactly the sort of thing The Onion says every day. I hope it is, very much, but I won't be completely surprised if the punchline comes.
posted by dg at 7:30 PM on November 14, 2024

So… will the Infowars audience notice?
posted by uncle harold at 12:00 AM on November 15, 2024

I'd love love love to see proposition betting odds on who gets InfoWars: "The Onion", "Walter J. Cicack/First United American Companies", or "Alex Jones, praise be to the Great God-King Trump".
posted by BiggerJ at 2:37 AM on November 15, 2024

surely this

It would be great if this commenting stratagem was permanently retired.

The positive outlook is that Jones’ shtick is pretty tired by this point, he’s not leading anything, and he’s toxic enough that he doesn’t have many real allies. No one is going to give him a helping hand. Hell, Tucker Carlson is clearly trying to steal his “I am a warrior against demonic evil” act, which is pretty low, but no honor or dignity among thieves. Whatever happens, Jones has been humiliated, and no one likes a loser. He’ll continue but not the way he has.

The negative outlook is that Jones’ next incarnation may or may not be legal enough to avoid a new round of lawsuits, but he’ll be around in some form or other for a long time, losing viewership but lurching along. And someone else will step in, because apparently the American appetite for Right-wing grift is large and constant. Who is that going to be? I don’t know. Despite his recent moves, Carlson just doesn’t seem to want to be unhinged enough to take the spot. Nick Fuentes is a bit too Nazi and a bit too punchable. Ben Shapiro is too Jewish and way too punchable. But I’m sure there’s someone.

So, there’s good news and bad news; I’m just choosing to focus on the good news because I need some good news, and the bad news isn’t actually here yet.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:29 AM on November 15, 2024 [2 favorites]

Enjoy the news for now, because Infowars is going back to Jones.

I would be surprised if the bankruptcy judge would be able to dictate to the creditors of Infowars how their debts shall be discharged, especially in this fairly unusual case where the creditors are primarily interested in salting the earth and one of the buyers is doing press interviews saying they intend to do exactly that.

Also yes this whole thing is also low-key a Bluesky story: Ben Collins is editor-in-chief of The Onion because people on Bluesky were making jokes about someone buying it, and he claims that they bought Infowars because people made jokes about The Onion buying Infowars.
posted by Merus at 6:24 AM on November 15, 2024 [2 favorites]

I expect the judge will invalidate the auction under the principal of Nothing Good Is Allowed to Happen in the United States of America
posted by Jon_Evil at 6:25 AM on November 15, 2024 [3 favorites]

Jones has a pretty solid history of eating shit in court so I wouldn't get so down in the dumps about it so quickly. At the worst, they'll have to do the auction again, and if that means I have to pony up $20 to help the Onion make a winning bid, I'm in
posted by dis_integration at 7:11 AM on November 15, 2024 [3 favorites]

The particularly annoying thing with the judge's comment is his lack of awareness about how Dutch auctions work, or that they're actually a common way to handle something like this.
posted by NoxAeternum at 7:21 AM on November 15, 2024 [1 favorite]

Ope mts Jeff *Lawson*, also founder of Twilio, blah blah. Point is, enjoy this, but remember there are no good billionaires.
posted by toodleydoodley at 7:35 AM on November 15, 2024 [1 favorite]

Area Man’s Website Purchased by Satirical Newspaper (Texas Monthly) Onion worthy headline.
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 1:58 PM on November 15, 2024 [5 favorites]

Alex Jones Is Trying to Halt the Sale of Infowars. Elon Musk’s X Just Got Involved in the Case.

“I was told Elon is going to be very involved in this,” Jones said during a live broadcast on X. After Infowars was seized and the site shut down, Jones promptly began operating under the name and branding of a new venture, dubbed the Alex Jones Network, which streams on X. Jones noted that lawyers for X were present at the hearing, adding, somewhat mysteriously, “The cavalry is here. Trump is pissed.”

posted by Nelson at 10:39 AM on November 16, 2024 [1 favorite]

It's the 2020's, we can't have anything nice.
posted by jenfullmoon at 4:18 PM on November 16, 2024 [1 favorite]

Granted. But in the absence of nice, I'll settle for watching TFG throw both Jones and Musk under the bus as soon as he tires of them which, given how essentially tedious both of them are, I shouldn't need to wait too long for.
posted by flabdablet at 8:47 PM on November 16, 2024 [1 favorite]

the Podcast Law and Chaos did a good episode about the legal process that is playing out in the texas bankruptcy court
posted by wowenthusiast at 10:00 AM on November 17, 2024 [2 favorites]

Very angry that we can't have nice things.

OTOH, the fact that the Forces of Evil are going so hard to stop this maybe shows how important it is? If Alex Jones has already popped up under a different name but is still fighting to keep Infowars, does that mean there's something to the brand/IP/customer list that he really needs?
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:39 AM on November 18, 2024

Another interpretation is Alex Jones is just flailing angrily like he always does with no plan. I thought it was very funny that his rants invoked Elon Musk. Every 2 bit fascist grifter is asking Elon for money right now, not sure Infowars is front of the line. OTOH if some of MuskTwitter's lawyers were at the hearing, that suggests something could be up.
posted by Nelson at 8:04 AM on November 18, 2024 [1 favorite]

OTOH if some of MuskTwitter's lawyers were at the hearing, that suggests something could be up.

They're involved because one of the items in the Free Speech Systems bundle is the @RealAlexJones tag, and the desecrated corpse of Twitter has legal interests in not letting tags be treated as property that can be disposed of in a lawsuit (because if they are, they may owe quite a bit of money to the people whose tags they seized.)

This is a good text overview of what is happening here.
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:49 AM on November 18, 2024 [7 favorites]

The court-appointed trustee overseeing the sale of Infowars just responded to the emergency motion to disqualify The Onion's bid, calling it "a disappointed bidder’s improper attempt to influence an otherwise fair and open auction process."
posted by dis_integration at 12:17 PM on November 18, 2024 [9 favorites]

Because that took some work to make sense of it: that's good news for The Onion.
posted by Pronoiac at 3:34 PM on November 18, 2024 [1 favorite]

The Weirdest Domains Alex Jones Has to Give to The Onion

goblinlove.com is my favorite. There's a whole empire possible with that brand. cuckdorsey.com is remarkable too.
posted by Nelson at 9:27 AM on November 19, 2024 [2 favorites]

succulentdinosaur.com feels adjacent to Chia Pets
posted by Pronoiac at 1:33 PM on November 19, 2024 [1 favorite]

NYT: The Onion’s Bid to Acquire Infowars Has Gotten Messy
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:16 AM on November 20, 2024 [1 favorite]

Which is a load of bullshit from the Times. It's "gotten messy" in that Jones threw a legal Hail Mary that has no actual footing.
posted by NoxAeternum at 9:58 AM on November 20, 2024 [1 favorite]

> the Podcast Law and Chaos did a good episode about the legal process that is playing out in the texas bankruptcy court

This podcast was really excellent on the topic if you're into podcasts. What I learned from it that was not obvious from other sources was:

1. The Onion offer is less cash (about $1.75 million vs $3.5 million or so from FUAC), but has two advantages: it's structured to give more money to the Texas families than the other offer, in a way that the New York families have approved of, so it's more beneficial. The pledge by the Sandy Hook families to forgo money here isn't so they can collude with the Onion. It's to ensure the Texas families get paid, since technically the Sandy Hook families are actually owed ~97 cents on every dollar recovered from Jones, which would leave the Texas families with almost nothing.
2. More importantly, it gives a % of ad revenue from the rebooted Onion-run infowars.com (i think in perpetuity) to the families. So the offer has the potential of paying out millions more over years than the FUAC ofer.

It sounds like there's almost 0 chance of the FUAC lawsuit changing things here, since the Onion offer is really attractive. And it will make you feel like you're doing charity just by visiting infowars.com in 2025.
posted by dis_integration at 10:26 AM on November 20, 2024 [4 favorites]

Liz Dye breaks down the auction and the bids for LegalEagle, including the way the Connecticut plaintiffs made sure the Texas plaintiffs actually get a meaningful recovery.

(i think in perpetuity)
The law does not allow for perpetuities (something that LegalEagle has actually discussed on his channel.) The deal likely either has a fixed term, or is using the lifespan of a known public individual as its length (like Prince William's youngest daughter, who has been used as such in deals of the sort.)
posted by NoxAeternum at 4:57 PM on November 22, 2024 [1 favorite]

It sounds like there's almost 0 chance of the FUAC lawsuit changing things here, since the Onion offer is really attractive.

In addition, the trustee responded to the FUAC lawsuit with the legal equivalent of "I know you lied, I can prove it, and I'm going to have the court beat you with the sanctions stick."
posted by NoxAeternum at 5:00 PM on November 22, 2024 [1 favorite]

I think Monday 12/9 is the hearing to settle this….
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:20 PM on December 3, 2024

Sadly, the bankruptcy judge killed the Global Tetrahedron offer, for incredibly stupid reasons.
posted by NoxAeternum at 4:55 AM on December 11, 2024 [1 favorite]

Because we can't even have the smallest of nice things in the 2020's.
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:44 AM on December 11, 2024

UGH. It's embarrassing that a judge thinks that "I don't like it" is sufficient grounds to reject the offer.
posted by EvaDestruction at 12:42 PM on December 11, 2024 [2 favorites]

Guess what kind of judge he is?
posted by jenfullmoon at 2:11 PM on December 11, 2024

I've heard from someone reasonably educated on the topic that a key factor in why the judge shot down the sale was because the plan involved way too many contingencies for legal comfort. I cannot claim with certainty that this is definitely the case, but it is at least vaguely plausible as a concern on their part.
posted by DoctorFedora at 6:07 PM on December 12, 2024 [1 favorite]

Nah, this comes across as face-saving for a judge who has been led around by Jones throughout the entire bankruptcy process, which is part of why it's taken so long - he's extended to Jones the benefit of the doubt long past when he should have.

The reality is that the judge took Jones' Hail Mary seriously when he shouldn't have, only for the trustee and the families to point out how ridiculous this was (especially his initial vehement reaction.) So in order to not look like a complete fool for that initial reaction, he ordered a do-over that his own order notes is unnecessary.
posted by NoxAeternum at 6:27 PM on December 12, 2024 [4 favorites]

What disgusts me is that it's so obvious that the other party is just going to hand it back to Jones. THEY ARE ALLOWING THIS?!?
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:20 AM on December 13, 2024 [1 favorite]

The Onion has posted an update:
> We have taken another proud, collective stride toward dystopia.
> A bankruptcy court has denied the sale of InfoWars following a month of drawn-out legal proceedings. The experience was long and punishing for all involved, and the final outcome is inconclusive: The InfoWars assets remain in limbo. Everything is now in doubt and everyone is worse off than before.
> In short, it is the kind of world we at Global Tetrahedron have always envisioned. One in which wealth begets wealth, power begets power, and the process itself inflicts daily suffering on innocent parties for no reason.
posted by Pronoiac at 4:03 PM on December 13, 2024 [7 favorites]