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Headline from the satirical site The Onion on Thursday: “New dating site suggests people you already know but thought you were too good for.” » “The Trump Boys Are Arguing Over Who Will Lead Foreign Policy Meetings.” “Here’s why I decided to buy Infowars.”

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Only one has the tone of truth. Sort of.

The author of the Infowars article, Bryce P. Tetraeder, does not actually exist. And the Onion has no plans to invest in business scholarships for promising cult leaders.

But Onion’s purchase of Alex Jones’ conspiracy theory-saturated media empire at a bankruptcy auction linked to lawsuits filed by the families of Sandy Hook shooting victims is real – an effort to combat lies with a funny, who’d-know-it development over the course of a year already somewhat incredible. An element of doubt was added Thursday evening when the judge overseeing Jones’ bankruptcy case ordered a hearing next week on how the auction was conducted.

On Thursday, The Onion immediately shut down Infowars and announced plans to relaunch it in January to parody conspiracy theorists.

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“Our goal in a few years is for people to think of Infowars as the funniest, silliest website out there,” said Ben Collins, CEO of Onion. “It used to be the stupidest website ever.”

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This is the end – at least for now – of a long chapter

The purchase, for an undisclosed amount, was supported by the Sandy Hook families, who received nearly $1.5 billion from lawsuits against Jones over his false claims that the 2012 shooting at an elementary school in the Connecticut was a hoax.

The new Infowars will be a satire of the theories put forward by Jones, which themselves were so absurd that they might have seemed satirical if they had not caused actual harm. The development ends a tentacle of a loose network of podcasters, TikTok influencers and others whose content keeps people perpetually provoked and enraged, Collins said. He called Jones a small character in a fear-based media universe.

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“They’ve had a free pass so far and we don’t think it’s fair,” he said.

At the very least, he said, The Onion hopes to bring fun back to the Internet to make up for years of doom-scrolling.

In Collins, who previously covered misinformation for NBC News, the new venture has a leader uniquely suited to what is being attempted, said Dale Beran, who directed this year’s Netflix documentary, “The Anti-Social Network”, on the subject.

The Onion, founded as a newspaper in 1988, has gone through several ownership changes and was purchased earlier this year by a group that includes Jeff Lawson, co-founder of software company Twilio. Since then, Beran said, “it feels like new life has been breathed into it.”

Done right, a satirical site about conspiracy theories and those who traffic in them could encounter a historic moment much like comedian Stephen Colbert did when his Comedy Central show, “The Colbert Report,” mocked the hosts of pompous conservative talk shows a decade and more ago. .

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And what will happen when some casual Jones fans who haven’t been following the bankruptcy auction news log on to Infowars in a few months to check out Onion’s new creation? Probably not much, said Beran, who suggested there was unlikely to be much overlap between people attracted to conspiracy theories and those who want to make fun of them.

Conspiracy theories abound on the fate of conspiracy theories

Indeed, conspiracy theories about Onion’s purchase of Infowars began appearing online just hours after its announcement.

“There is no chance that this outlet, which has not been important for years, could afford this purchase alone. Who was really behind all this? the Zeee Media website, which bills itself as “one of Australia’s most trusted sources of uncensored news”, published on X.

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Jones himself hastily posted a video to his fans on Thursday. “This is a total attack on free speech,” he said. “The deep state is completely out of control. »

There is an impact every time a major website that spreads misinformation is shut down. Still, the business model of reaching people who want to get angry is still viable, Beran said. Another misinformation expert suggested Jones would quickly move on and his fans would go with him.

“As long as there are people willing to connect, he will find new outlets,” said Yotam Ophir, director of the Media Effects, Disinformation and Extremism Lab at the University at Buffalo. “If anything, the Onion trolling and legal action against him will only make some of his most devoted fans even more certain of his righteousness, viewing him as a martyr to free speech.”

At the very least, the Onion purchase offered a moment of zen for liberals who had a pretty rough week following Donald Trump’s election victory and the Republican Party’s victory in Congress.

“It’s bad karma turned good,” wrote Timothy W. Larson, who describes himself on X as an “unapologetic progressive.” “I love it.”

— Associated Press Dave Collins in Hartford, Connecticut, contributed to this report. David Bauder writes about media for the AP.

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