When actuality turns into stranger than satire, possibly the satirists can train us one thing. The Onion confirmed on Thursday that its dad or mum firm purchased Infowars, the disgraced purveyor of Sandy Hook misinformation and vendor of pseudoscience dietary supplements. The Onion posted on Bluesky that it plans to rework the rebooted Infowars into “a really humorous, very silly web site.”
The Onion says it acquired the blessing of the households of the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary College taking pictures to scoop up Infowars in a chapter public sale. Everytown for Gun Security, a nonprofit based within the bloodbath’s aftermath, will reportedly promote on the rebooted website. Infowars founder Alex Jones was discovered liable in 2022 for almost $1.5 billion in damages for spreading conspiracy theories in regards to the 2012 taking pictures that killed 20 kids and 6 grownup staffers.
Elon Musk allowed Jones back on X (Twitter) final yr after the platform “completely” banned him in 2018 below its earlier possession.
As America’s chief satire publication (at the least of these doing so consciously), The Onion’s announcement of the acquisition stayed on brand. Its tone, hinting at what’s to return, resembled The Colbert Report on steroids (or possibly Jones’ “Survival Protect X-2” pills).
“Based in 1999 on the heels of the Satanic ‘panic’ and rising steadily ever since, InfoWars has distinguished itself as a useful software for brainwashing and controlling the plenty,” The Onion wrote in a truth-meets-fiction announcement. “With a shrewd mixture of delusional paranoia and doubtful anti-aging diet hacks, they attempt to make life each scarier and longer for everybody, a commendable aim. They’re a real unicorn, able to concurrently inspiring public assist for billionaires and stoking outrage at a clumsy federal state that may assassinate JFK however can’t even put a person on the Moon.”
The Onion plans to rebrand Infowars as a parody of itself (greater than it already was), poking enjoyable at “bizarre web personalities” like Jones, in keeping with The New York Instances. Ben Collins, the CEO of The Onion’s dad or mum firm, International Tetrahedron, hasn’t stated how a lot it paid to rework Infowars’ damaging self-parody into constructive satire. (Collins reported extensively on Infowars when overlaying misinformation at NBC Information.) He plans to launch the rebooted website in January.
