[HN Gopher] The Onion buys Infowars
___________________________________________________________________
The Onion buys Infowars
Author : coloneltcb
Score : 1277 points
Date : 2024-11-14 14:10 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| jsheard wrote:
| The announcement by America's Finest News Source:
| https://theonion.com/heres-why-i-decided-to-buy-infowars/
|
| Alex Jones response:
| https://x.com/RealAlexJones/status/1857058831135645739
| mtmail wrote:
| Reading the article didn't give me any confidence it's actually
| real/true. Which could be seen as a compliment.
| ixtli wrote:
| It is actually true!
| https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/14/business/media/alex-
| jones...
| hoppyhoppy2 wrote:
| No-paywall link:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/14/business/media/alex-
| jones...
| tgv wrote:
| 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.
| arethuza wrote:
| If Brexit taught me anything it was that the correct phrase
| is pesky _unelected_ EU bureaucrats!
| soco wrote:
| Now if we want to get into dirty details, no bureaucrat is
| ever elected. You elect the representatives, and they
| nominate in turn whoever bureaucrats they feel comfy to
| work with. Or is this in the UK different?
| vidarh wrote:
| Yes, but that is not the point. The point is it was a
| favorite attack point used by Brexit supporters. A whole
| lot of the accusations against the EU applied just as
| much - sometimes much more - to the UK itself.
| notahacker wrote:
| We have people who frothed at the mouth over the role
| played by _unelected_ bureaucrats now frothing at the
| mouth at proposals to remove the last hereditary Lords
| from our legislature...
|
| (in fairness, those people tend to hate the Civil Service
| in the UK too. And they're _elected_ hereditary Lords,
| albeit via a franchise consisting entirely of other
| hereditary Lords)
| kergonath wrote:
| Indeed. That pattern was obvious even before the
| referendum. The UK is know for its strong civil servant
| body that can keep the ship afloat when the old chaps in
| the government have no clue which way is up. And its
| first past the post system. It is admirable on a lot of
| levels but certainly not any more democratic than the EU.
| data_maan wrote:
| This!
| maeln wrote:
| > You elect the representatives, and they nominate in
| turn whoever bureaucrats they feel comfy to work with.
|
| This is not always the case, although I guess it depends
| how you define bureaucrats. As an example, in France,
| most of the administration is not nominated. You become a
| public worker through exam, and the representative
| usually have no power over your nomination, raises, etc.
| It does make sense in a lot of cases. For example, in a
| city, only the mayor and its advisers are elected, and
| they do not have any control over the administration of
| the city. But the administration cannot refuse to work
| with a specific mayor. If they do, they would need to be
| moved elsewhere, or simply be fired for not doing their
| job. On the other hand, they are also bound by the law,
| so they also act as a counter power to crazy mayor who
| wants to do illegal stuff. Meaning, if the mayor ask the
| administration to do something illegal, they can
| absolutely say no with no fear of repercussion for their
| job.
|
| It also makes sense for other counter-power office, where
| having the currently elected representatives being able
| to choose who control the office would go against its
| whole purpose.
| lucianbr wrote:
| > You become a public worker through exam, and the
| representative usually have no power over your
| nomination, raises, etc.
|
| Who else would have power over "nomination, raises etc"
| of anyone, if not elected representatives? Other public
| workers? At this point would they not be a sovereign
| group distinct from France, untouchable by the french
| people?
|
| I guess the elected representatives have indirect power
| over everything in the end, if France is still a
| democracy. May be lots of layers of indirection, like the
| need to pass or change a law, but still.
|
| Who defines and administers the exam you mentioned? Other
| public representatives? Can they decide to pass their
| relatives?
| rsynnott wrote:
| > Who else would have power over "nomination, raises etc"
| of anyone, if not elected representatives? Other public
| workers?
|
| Yes, that's how the civil service works in most
| countries, more or less. The US is an outlier in that the
| executive appoints about 4,000 civil servants; most
| places don't work like that (even in the US; _most_ civil
| servants (about 2.8 million of them, federal) are hired,
| promoted, disciplined etc by other civil servants; the
| president doesn't sit in on every interview or anything.)
|
| > I guess the elected representatives have indirect power
| over everything in the end, if France is still a
| democracy.
|
| The elected representatives pass laws. The civil service
| implements them.
|
| Separately, at least in many countries, not sure about
| France, you have the concept of power devolved to the
| minister, where the legislature passes a law allowing the
| minister to make orders in certain restricted areas, a
| bit like a scope-limited version of US presidential
| executive orders.
|
| This occasionally has amusing repercussions if the
| original devolution legislation was insufficient or
| unconstitutional; for instance in Ireland nearly all
| drugs (morphine, heroin, cannabis and possibly cocaine
| remained illegal) were accidentally legalised for a day,
| when the supreme count found that the legislation used to
| enable the Minister for Justice to ban drugs was
| insufficient, thus legalising everything which had been
| banned since it was passed.
| shagie wrote:
| > The US is an outlier in that the executive appoints
| about 4,000 civil servants; most places don't work like
| that (even in the US; _most_ civil servants (about 2.8
| million of them, federal) are hired, promoted,
| disciplined etc by other civil servants; the president
| doesn't sit in on every interview or anything.)
|
| This is one of the concerning parts with the incoming
| administration.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-
| news/2024/sep/25/project-2025...
|
| > Project 2025, which is backed by the rightwing Heritage
| Foundation thinktank, has proposed to "dismantle the
| administrative state", while Trump's official "Agenda 47"
| calls for "cleaning out the Deep State" and "on Day One"
| issuing an "executive order restoring the president's
| authority to fire rogue bureaucrats".
|
| > That executive order would set up a system, known as
| Schedule F, that would revamp the federal bureaucracy so
| that far more jobs could be filled with political
| appointees rather than through traditional merit rules.
| Trump's supporters say Schedule F would cover about
| 50,000 federal employees, but unions representing federal
| workers say it would cover many times that. Currently,
| approximately 4,000 federal positions are subject to
| presidential appointment. Trump's allies are said to have
| compiled a list of 20,000 loyalists who could quickly
| move into federal jobs in a new Trump administration.
|
| ---
|
| That 4,000 is looking to become 20,000 and potentially
| increase up to 50,000 (and beyond depending how far
| reaching the reclassification is).
| lucianbr wrote:
| I suspect the coming administration would find a way to
| do the same thing even if it was in Germany or France. I
| suspect if the extreme right parties there ever win, they
| will find a way to achieve this too.
|
| Best to be aware of this, not deceive ourselves that
| public servants are untouchable. Some people might get
| the idea that voting for a very bad politician would just
| send a message and not have much real effect, as the
| civil servants are the same and will do the same job and
| cannot be removed. They can. Even in Germany.
| maeln wrote:
| You are not wrong. Exam, raises, lateral and vertical
| move are decided (in most case) by:
|
| 1. The law. For example, public worker salary's are
| explicitly defined on a public grid, which depends on
| several factor (exact position, how long you have been in
| the job, the national public worker salary index, ...).
|
| 2. Their boss / future boss. Promotion it partly a matter
| of law, but also partly at the discretion of your boss.
| Same for a lateral move. If a position open, and you are
| qualified to fill it, you have to have interview just
| like a normal job offer.
|
| There is a bunch a caveat and details, but that's the
| gist of it. So, technically, representative do have power
| over this. Some representatives can change the law, and
| some are technically more or less the boss of the top
| officer at some administration. But it still make a lot
| of things difficult if not impossible. A mayor cannot
| change national law, only Depute of the national assembly
| can, so he has no power over the salary of his
| administration. He also has no power to fire someone from
| the local administration unless he can prove that they
| did something that the law consider a fireable offense.
| The same would go for a minister.
|
| Of course, in effect, they do yield a lot of influence.
| While public worker are very, very rarely fired, they can
| be moved to another position, which is easier to do and
| what usually happen when someone powerful want them gone
| without having the actual power to do so directly.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| > Who else would have power over "nomination, raises etc"
| of anyone, if not elected representatives?
|
| In many countries that is done based on laws describing
| career progression process.
|
| In Germany most administration workers are "career"
| folks, who study at the university of administration and
| then have a career paths, where levels at are relatively
| clearly described. Only heads of different authorities
| are "political" positions, which are nominated by
| ministers and can be fired/retired relatively easily but
| even those in most cases stay across administrations.
| Only ministers and their direct staff change.
|
| In some ministries there sometimes is the saying "we
| don't care who is minoster below us" but if a some
| minister with an agenda is appointed they still can be
| very effective.
| lucianbr wrote:
| Seems like a pretty good system. Or who knows.
|
| But since the law is written by elected representatives,
| to say that the representatives have no power in this
| case seems wrong, to me. That's all.
|
| If the voters will vote for the "fire Joe" party 20 years
| in a row, I guarantee Joe the civil servant will
| eventually be fired, even in Germany, France, anywhere.
| Well, maybe not in China, but that's different. Anywhere
| where votes still matter. Solutions would be found, laws
| changed, exceptions provided, and so on.
| Yeul wrote:
| Civil servants are a-political so why would you need to
| fire them? A civil servant carries out whatever law is
| enacted by the government. The bureaucracy is a tool and
| tools don't have a will.
| jowea wrote:
| > Civil servants are a-political so why would you need to
| fire them?
|
| Have you watched the British documentary series "Yes,
| Minister"?
| exe34 wrote:
| you mistake lethargy for strategy!
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Like any other worker, they should be fired when they
| don't do their job well enough.
|
| Civil servants are people like you and me, and have as
| strong will as anyone.
| gbacon wrote:
| This ignores the self-interest of civil servants, which
| they most definitely have and is the basis for public
| choice theory.
|
| _Building upon economic theory, public choice has a few
| core tenets. One is that no decision is made by an
| aggregate whole. Rather, decisions are made by combined
| individual choices. A second is the use of markets in the
| political system. A third is the self-interested nature
| of everyone in a political system._
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_choice
| lucianbr wrote:
| > The bureaucracy is a tool and tools don't have a will.
|
| As if it's not made of humans. This view is in grave
| error. Nobody is perfectly rational, nobody is beyond
| bias or subjectivty, nobody is beyond human emotions.
| scott_w wrote:
| I don't think this is strictly true. There are documented
| cases where, for better or worse, apolitical civil
| servants undermined politicians. Rory Stewart's book has
| some great examples.
| bjourne wrote:
| One reason is scapegoating. If a politician fucks up they
| can shift the blame to civil servants. Another reason is
| conflicts. Politician proposes a law and the head of the
| affected department says that the law will lead to major
| loss of tax revenue.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| There are two factors: One is that the Constitution
| disallows laws for a special case. Thus a "fire joe law"
| may not exist (without Change to constitution)
|
| However: Yes, who you vote for impacts government. If you
| vote for a party which sets priority in building bike
| sheds, the authorities will move staff to the required
| departments, while Joe remains in the department nobody
| cares about anymore and thus can't meet the promotion
| goals. (While he will still receive the regular raise for
| the job level he is in) And if one truly wants to get rid
| of Joe there certainly is a way to find a reason for
| demoting him ..
|
| But it's way different from the American system which
| sweeps thousand of jobs, according to [1] about 4,000
| jobs directly, where then many of those bring in their
| assistant, advisor etc.
|
| [1] https://presidentialtransition.org/wp-
| content/uploads/sites/...
| lucianbr wrote:
| Yeah, I get it's different. Not saying it's the same.
| Just don't give me the absolute "civil servants are
| untouchable by politicians". It would be bad if they
| really were untouchable.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| I never stated that. But there is a notable cultural
| difference between Europe and US.
|
| This goes also further: Many offices which are elected in
| the US are appointed in Europe (I'm not aware of a
| European country where population elects state/district
| attorneys, sheriffs, judges, school boards, etc)
| scott_w wrote:
| But now we're in reducto ad absurdum territory because
| elected officials can pass laws to force private
| companies to fire specific employees, too. And before you
| say "constitution," that can also be amended.
| lucianbr wrote:
| I have no clue what your point is. Reductio ad absurdum
| is a useful argument, not a logical fallacy.
|
| > And before you say "constitution,"
|
| I have zero idea why I would say "constitution" or
| anything really. My entire point is that nobody is beyond
| the reach of elected representatives, and that is by
| design and a good thing too.
| scott_w wrote:
| > My entire point is that nobody is beyond the reach of
| elected representatives
|
| That's just stating the obvious.
|
| > that is by design
|
| No, it's not. It's just a fact of life that governments
| can control every aspect of a person's life if it
| chooses. It's always been this way and always will be.
|
| This is why your statements are absurd.
|
| When people refer to a civil service as being
| "apolitical" or "not politically appointed," it's obvious
| that they're not referring to absurd cases like "a
| government can outlaw them from having a job."
|
| That's why I said you're reducing the argument to
| absurdity.
| bjourne wrote:
| > I guess the elected representatives have indirect power
| over everything in the end, if France is still a
| democracy. May be lots of layers of indirection, like the
| need to pass or change a law, but still.
|
| Yes, in the end of course. But these layers of
| indirection are extremely important. In my country right-
| wing politicians are currently rallying against
| prosecutors they think are "too lenient" with criminals.
| If it weren't for the indirection those prosecutors would
| have been replaced with the politicians' yes-friends long
| ago.
| jorvi wrote:
| Meanwile, Macron chooses to ignore a left victory, then
| refuses to accept their prime minister and instead co-
| opts the election to instant the same center-right
| government that was broken up a few months prior. :+)
| kergonath wrote:
| Now, to be fair that is partly the result of the left-
| wing coalition imploding (as usual... sigh) and being
| generally unwilling to compromise. It turns out that when
| you don't have a majority, being the biggest party does
| not matter that much if you are unpleasant enough to make
| the other parties rally against you. Yes, I am bitter.
| shagie wrote:
| If you can find a copy of the game Koalition (
| https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/303/koalition ) it
| has some of the fun of European politics in it.
|
| > 60 politicians of all colors stand for election in the
| 15 countries of the European Union: unimaginable benefits
| and positions of influence await their power brokers, for
| it is these Machiavellian lobbyists and self-appointed
| "leaders" who hold the real power in the palms of their
| hands.
|
| And from the rules:
|
| > The player with the most total votes played in a given
| party is the party representative. If a player has two
| cards in the same party, their value is added. If two or
| more players have the same vote total in a party, the one
| with the highest single card is the party representative.
| Remember that a doubler card, if played, will always be
| considered the highest card. Also, note that it is
| possible for one player to control two parties.
|
| > If Gaudino is played in a party in competition with
| another politician valued 7 in that party, he is
| considered to be the higher card.
|
| > The green-leaf party is a special case. If two players
| tie for total value in green cards, it is possible that
| they will still tie for highest single card value. In
| that case, the two players are given thirty seconds to
| agree on who will be the green representative. If they do
| not agree in that time, each player with green cards may
| negotiate separately.
| wwweston wrote:
| > I guess it depends how you define bureaucrats.
|
| "If Gondor, Boromir, has been a stalwart tower, [those
| who work at public bureaus] have played another part.
| Many evil things there are that your strong walls and
| bright swords do not stay. You know little of the lands
| beyond your bounds. Peace and freedom, do you say? The
| North would have known them little but for us."
| ruthmarx wrote:
| > For example, in a city, only the mayor and its advisers
| are elected, and they do not have any control over the
| administration of the city. But the administration cannot
| refuse to work with a specific mayor.
|
| The mayor can still dictate policy and the administration
| have to implement it if it is not illegal, right?
| andrepd wrote:
| The EU is governed by the European Commission, which is
| not elected. Say what you will about reactionary British
| conservatives, the fact remains that the EU is not a
| particularly democratic organisation.
| arethuza wrote:
| The members of the Commission are appointed by the
| governments of the member states which _are_ elected?
| gpderetta wrote:
| Not in all EU members; in parliamentary republics (as
| opposed to presidential republics) governments are not
| typically elected.
|
| That's also the case in the UK.
| data_maan wrote:
| How is that true, if the body that nominates the European
| Commission _is_ elected??
|
| By the same argument you could say UK or US or any other
| solidly democratic is not democratic, because some
| commission or organisation is not directly, by the
| people, elected.
|
| (If you go for the direct election argument, the UK fares
| pretty badly BTW.)
| mike_hearn wrote:
| The body that nominates the Commission isn't elected.
|
| In theory the Commission is mostly made up of civil
| servants who answer to commissioners, who are themselves
| nominated by each country's own government or civil
| service. Each commissioner has one area of responsibility
| only, and they answer to the head of the Commission who
| is their boss. So someone in the UK votes for a
| politician, who votes for a party leader, who appoints
| some ministers, and those ministers may or may not have
| much of a say in whoever gets nominated to be a
| commissioner - one of many. But there is at least a path
| there, even if long and indirect and the person your vote
| ends up influencing doesn't do anything important to your
| country or needs.
|
| In practice it doesn't actually work that way. In
| practice, the head of the Commission has veto power over
| the nominations. They aren't supposed to according to the
| treaties but the treaties are ignored. This means that in
| reality it's the head of the Commission who picks the
| Commissioners, because they can just reject anyone who
| isn't sufficiently aligned with their own agenda.
|
| So that leaves the question of how the head of the
| Commission is picked. Once again there is theory and
| practice. In theory, it's a decision of the heads of each
| state that they take together to select some candidates,
| and the Parliament then gets to vote for their preferred
| candidate. In practice ... nobody knows how the head is
| picked. Ursula von der Leyen was recently re-appointed
| despite being plagued by scandals and having a long
| career of failing upwards. Parliament was sidelined by
| giving them a voting list with only one candidate on it
| (her). Seek out an explanation of how she got this job
| and you won't find one because:
|
| 1. The heads of state don't talk about how they decide as
| a group. Is it a vote? Some sort of horse trading? Do
| they take it in turns? Are they even all able to take
| part? Nobody knows.
|
| 2. There's no record of which country voted for who, or
| why.
|
| 3. The process by which someone even becomes a candidate
| is unclear.
|
| 4. Because no head of state has any control over who gets
| onto the candidate list, they never talk on the campaign
| trail about how they will "vote" (assuming that's how it
| works) for who runs the EU.
|
| In other words, the process is entirely secret. The
| potential for corruption is unlimited.
|
| So when critics say the EU Commission is a bunch of
| unelected bureaucrats, they are right and those who argue
| otherwise here on HN are wrong. People who got their jobs
| via a process so opaque and indirect that how it
| functions can't be explained, not even in principle,
| cannot claim to be democratically selected.
| shafyy wrote:
| The Bundesrat in Switzerland is also not elected directly
| by the people, it's elected by Congress. The
| Bundeskanzler in Germany are not also not elected
| directly by the people, they are elected by Congress.
| ben_w wrote:
| > Or is this in the UK different?
|
| A bit; mostly as you say, but also it's a kingdom and has
| the House of Lords whose seats are partially heritable,
| partially religious appointments from the state religion
| with the monarch at the top, in addition to those
| appointed by the elected government.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lords_Spiritual
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lords_Temporal
| graemep wrote:
| > partially religious appointments from the state
| religion
|
| There are also, in practice, a number of other religious
| appointments made to provide other religious groups with
| representation.
|
| > in addition to those appointed by the elected
| government.
|
| Those are the most problematic IMO. Businesspeople
| (because the rich do not have enough influence on
| politics and cannot get their voice heard?), and former
| politicians.
|
| I think how it works is nicely summarised by the fact
| that at least one of the founders of an ecommerce website
| (lastminute.com) is a peer but no-one like (for example)
| Tim Berners-Lee is.
| medo-bear wrote:
| Yeah but the EU ones are very powerful
| rob74 wrote:
| Beware the EU deep (super)state! But don't fear, it's no
| match for our shallow catchphrases!
| arethuza wrote:
| "Deep supranational political and economic union" really
| doesn't have the same ring to it.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| Deep Economic Supranational Political Association
| Integrating Regions would be catchy.
| data_maan wrote:
| Newsflash: the Pentagon has literally _millions_ of
| bureaucrats.
|
| None elected.
|
| Unelected people are tasked with defending the free world.
| how about that?
| jsheard wrote:
| 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.
|
| [1] https://i.imgur.com/iNDpZt2.png
| loopdoend wrote:
| Didn't he die in jail last year?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I rather suspect that won't matter to The Onion.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| That's what they want us to think... Is what I'm pretty
| sure InfoWars would tell me.
| PhasmaFelis wrote:
| If T. Herman Zweibel didn't let corporeal death force him
| out of the Onion, why should Kaczynski?
| yapyap wrote:
| I mean would the Onion lie to us
| jaggederest wrote:
| I'm sure Zombie Kaczynski will have cogent contributions
| to make still.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Positive ones, even!
| tomcam wrote:
| My next low budget horror film is going to be Zombie
| Kaczynski
| diggan wrote:
| > 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.
| arethuza wrote:
| Sorry, we're being critical of the EU - logic doesn't
| apply!
| jantissler wrote:
| It almost feels like a joke to be honest!
| criddell wrote:
| Are you really criticizing The Onion's fact-checking?
|
| Can you spot any problems with their plan for the
| supplement inventory?
|
| > 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
| BizarroLand wrote:
| I was a worker on that project. A crumb of the
| omnivitamin fell off and touched my right hand and now
| that hand doesn't age anymore like Bruce Willis's hands
| in Death Becomes Her
| Kye wrote:
| More like Death Becrumbs Her
| notatoad wrote:
| >Can you spot any problems with their plan for the
| supplement inventory?
|
| as a regular reader of infowars and a happy customer of
| their supplements, i cannot see any flaw in that logic
| and can only hope that i, a successful business
| executive, will be the person they choose to give
| immortality to.
| 98codes wrote:
| > Based on what previous in-real-life examples is this a
| realistic worry
|
| My interpretation is that the post you replied to was 100%
| satire.
| tootie wrote:
| 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).
| pennybanks wrote:
| dont get it twisted. this is a business move lol.
| nyanpasu64 wrote:
| Well a tetrahedron can be split into four tetrahedra and an
| octahedron...
| rightbyte wrote:
| Seems like the article is really gleeful. Somewhat ironic since
| The Onion could be brought down in the same way by defamation
| lawsuits.
| afavour wrote:
| > Seems like the article is really gleeful.
|
| 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.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Yes and he profits from fooling mentally ill people.
| Selling homeopatic pills and whatever.
|
| But I think the right to be wrong is way more important
| than getting at Alexander Jones.
|
| The precedent is bad.
| afavour wrote:
| > The precedent is bad.
|
| I think the opposite precent would be worse. Regulating
| your tone around anyone with even a mediocum of power for
| fear of repercussion is part of the reason we're in the
| situation we face today.
| metamet wrote:
| What precedent do you think this sets exactly?
| hmmm-i-wonder wrote:
| There is a right to be wrong.
|
| But when you profit off the suffering and harm you've
| caused by being wrong knowingly and continuing to cause
| harm, then its a very good precedent.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| The right to be wrong is important.
|
| The right to _deliberately lie in ways that harm people_
| is not a "right" that we want to uphold.
| larrywright wrote:
| And profit off of the lies.
| AdamN wrote:
| The precedent would otherwise be that it is ok ignoring
| and debasing the US Justice system.
| miltonlost wrote:
| Calling Sandy Hook a hoax and harrassing grieving parents
| is not "the right to be wrong".
| c-linkage wrote:
| The Paradox of Tolerance:
| <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance>
|
| A good reply I found online:
|
| The Paradox of Tolerance disappears if you look at
| tolerance not as a moral standard but as a social
| contract. If someone does not abide the terms of mutual
| tolerance, then they are not covered by the contract. By
| definition intolerant people do not follow the rules so
| they are no longer covered and should not be tolerated.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Indeed. And one of the wonders of this is that anyone can
| determine that you have not abided by the terms. Even
| Stalin's Russia was tolerant. It merely deemed many
| people to not abide by the terms of mutual tolerance.
| tightbookkeeper wrote:
| I have yet to hear what meaning tolerance has in this
| interpretation.
|
| Surely chairman mao agrees with free speech that doesn't
| harm his society and social programs
| int_19h wrote:
| That's awfully close to "terrorists shouldn't have
| rights", and problematic for the same reason.
| genrilz wrote:
| I think it's actually closer to "terrorists should go to
| prison". Terrorists and other criminals have broken a
| social contract, and a level of punishment that some
| approximation of society deems to be acceptable is
| extracted from the terrorists. This doesn't mean that
| terrorists don't/shouldn't have some rights. Similarly,
| thinking about tolerance as a social contract doesn't
| require stripping anyone who violates this contract of
| _all_ of their rights.
| int_19h wrote:
| FWIW I don't actually have a problem with Jones
| specifically getting in trouble over defamation after
| getting his day in court. What I have a problem with is
| the broad notion that it's generally okay to "not
| tolerate the intolerant" to the point of forcibly
| suppressing them. The paradox of tolerance is not really
| a paradox when we're talking about intolerant speech.
| genrilz wrote:
| I'm kind of worried about society deciding which speech
| is "intolerant", so I'm not completely on board with the
| idea of treating tolerance as a social contract. That
| being said, if we could stop a genocide merely by
| suppressing people's speech, I feel like that would
| probably be a worthwhile thing to do. That is to say, it
| feels like the least bad way to prevent a genocide.
|
| Again, figuring out which speech is worth suppressing is
| a whole other can of worms.
|
| EDIT: note that Jones did have his speech suppressed, and
| this was done because his speech was causing people to
| make death threats against the sandy hook parents. I feel
| like we could classify Jones's speech as intolerant
| against sandy hook parents, and the same logic applies as
| for any other type of intolerant speech.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| "Being wrong" and "repeatedly defaming people" are quite
| different.
| rurp wrote:
| I can't imagine a more valid use for defamation laws than
| to prevent someone from knowingly and repeatedly causing
| death threats and other harassment to be directed at
| parents whose children have been murdered. After being
| sued, Jones completely failed to defend himself in any
| meaningful way and lost the suit by default. I honestly
| have no idea which part of this chain of events you
| object to. People should be free to send mobs after
| parents grieving an unimaginable tragedy? Morons who get
| sued should win by default?
| Kye wrote:
| Not likely. Satire is protected under the First Amendment.
| smidgeon wrote:
| Are you as confident about the 22nd?
| lenerdenator wrote:
| > 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.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Fair enough. I didn't know it was a walkover in the end.
| And it is not really surprising there was no sane defence.
|
| I believe Info Wars etc becoming big is pretty much a
| symptom rather than the problem. And it has escalated
| lately. I fear that they will be used as excuses for
| getting at others.
| fireflash38 wrote:
| > I believe Info Wars etc becoming big is pretty much a
| symptom rather than the problem
|
| I believe the problem is how incredibly _easy_ it is to
| both disseminate and consume utter bullshit. You 're no
| longer that weird loner in town. You go online and can
| find hundreds and thousands of people who agree with you.
| Why would you go find people that challenge your views,
| when you can get those dopamine highs from people who
| love everything you say?
|
| Get pushback from people in your life? Cut them out. They
| don't get you, and they're just hating.
|
| The worst part? It's self-sustaining. Humans are really
| bad about going against a group. So much of our social
| behavior is around what others do, and the more we find
| out about others believing XYZ, we'll start to believe it
| ourselves. Unless they're from a _different_ group, in
| which case it is anathema.
|
| Combine those 2 things and you get these people who
| basically live in separate worlds. And social
| media/internet enables that.
| larrywright wrote:
| > I believe the problem is how incredibly easy it is to
| both disseminate and consume utter bullshit.
|
| But more importantly, how easy it is to make a lot of
| money disseminating it.
| rightbyte wrote:
| I think there is a three fold problem of the mental
| health crisis, decreased social trust (broken communities
| etc) and algorithmic feeds.
|
| I don't know if Alex Jones is mentally ill or pretends to
| be. His targeting seems suspiciously self-aware and lame
| compared to how it usually sounds when people wander down
| that path.
|
| But I guess most of his viewership is. But they existed
| on the internets in the beginning too. Plenty of them.
| Maybe the recommendation engines bring more people into
| the "self-sustaining" circle, than would be otherwise?
|
| I think what has changed is mainly that there are more
| 'leaders'. I might have had the wrong conception of what
| it was like earlier, but apart from Alex Jones and the
| lizard guy (David Ike?) it didn't seem to be that many.
|
| Something has changed. There are so many lunatic
| "influencers" nowadays that keep getting pushed to the
| top. Earlier you had to get out of your way to stumble
| upon them.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| the problem was that it was profitable.
| 3D30497420 wrote:
| IANAL, but I'd also imagine there's a difference between
| clear satire and something being presented as the truth.
| Additionally, The Onion generally goes after public figures
| while Infowars, in this case, was targeting private
| individuals. Not sure how either of these have bearing in
| the legal sense, but could be important factors.
|
| Of course, in a politicized legal context, these points may
| not matter since legal action could simply be an endurance
| trial.
| moate wrote:
| >>I'd also imagine there's a difference between clear
| satire and something being presented as the truth. There
| is, and the 1st amendment's coverage of Parody/Satire is
| very well documented. The Onion has always made it clear
| that it's fake news, Infowars fought tooth and nail to
| say they're allowed to say their "truth" even if it's
| harmful lies. When you can prove that someone believes
| the damaging bullshit they're saying (not always easy!)
| they get their dick kicked in.
|
| To your other point, "a well-financed bad actor could
| ruin any business with enough SLAPP lawsuits" falls away
| because anti-SLAPP laws exist and award damages if you
| push too hard.
|
| Do perfectly good people get ruined through litigation?
| Sure. Is it the epidemic that grifters trying to sway
| public opinion in their favor make it out to be? Highly
| unlikely.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| A lot of jurisdictions have anti-SLAPP lawsuits, but not
| all. I think Logan Paul is trying to sue YouTuber
| Coffeezilla in a district that doesn't have anti-SLAPP
| protections with the express intent of bankrupting him.
| vman81 wrote:
| Jones' lawyers at one point forwarded a full phone dump of
| Jones' phone by accident to opposing council. They of
| course notified Jones' lawyers immediately to ask if this
| was a mistake that they should delete/disregard, as was
| their right. Jones' lawyers promptly ignored this, or
| didn't understand what was going on, resulting it becoming
| fair game after X days had passed. This goody bag of text
| messages and pictures contradicted several points of Jones'
| defence regarding who he was communicating with and a bunch
| of incriminating evidence that wasn't produced during
| discovery. That was my understanding of that episode, I may
| have misunderstood parts of it. Oh, and they revealed this
| when Jones was on the stand, and it is available to view:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IC9RiRUF21A
| shagie wrote:
| Legal Eagle (among many others I suspect - that's just
| the channel I tend to follow for pop legal) did a
| breakdown of that clip explaining what was going on for
| the layperson: https://youtu.be/x-QcbOphxYs
| krick wrote:
| I wonder if attorneys have any liability at all. Granted,
| lawyers do not provide any guarantees, and I usually tend
| to be more forgiving of genuine fuckups, but this seems a
| bit too much. The very least you expect from a hired
| lawyer is not to single-handedly destroy all your
| defense.
| triceratops wrote:
| You can sue a lawyer for malpractice, same as a doctor.
| They even carry insurance for it.
| lesuorac wrote:
| Also worth remembering, the entire lawsuit wasn't about
| defamation.
|
| There were several claims about things such as Alex Jones
| paying individuals to call the plaintiffs 24/7 and other
| direct forms of harassment.
|
| Feel however you want about free speech but the lawsuit
| wasn't just Alex Jones said mean words.
| adventured wrote:
| 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
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| it absolutely can not, satire is protected under the first
| amendment and there are piles of precedence
| yabones wrote:
| Great point! When The Onion starts making threats against
| survivors and relatives of school shootings, they should also
| face defamation lawsuits.
| ta8645 wrote:
| Honest question: what threats did Jones make against them?
| I understood that he claimed it was a hoax/conspiracy, not
| that he had made any threats. Not even sure how he could
| make threats against people he didn't believe were real.
| tim333 wrote:
| The threats were made by Jones followers rather than
| Jones personally.
| ta8645 wrote:
| Okay. But I think that undermines the argument the OP was
| making significantly.
| scblock wrote:
| "Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?"
| Yeul wrote:
| And when one of your followers has done the deed throw
| them under a bus.
| ta8645 wrote:
| Did he actually call for people to make threats or use
| violence? Did he even imply it?
|
| Do you apply the same standard to public figures who call
| Trump a fascist or a Nazi? Are they responsible for the
| person who shot him?
| ToValueFunfetti wrote:
| I think that's a very different statement from "God, I
| hate that stupid priest. He's so meddlesome." Criticizing
| people should not count as incitement in a liberal
| society- consider whether people who told an audience
| that Trump was a fascist should be held accountable for
| the assassination attempts. This is defamation.
| the_optimist wrote:
| If I understand correctly: if I threaten a third party
| based on something you've said, you now face legal
| liability?
| raverbashing wrote:
| The Onion was not telling the parents of dead children they
| were crisis actors and were lying
|
| Don't want to be sued by defamation don't make BS about
| people in a fragile position. It's that simple
| mrguyorama wrote:
| In the US, the truth is a strong and approved defense
| against defamation. If you are for some reason terrified of
| defamation lawsuits in the one nation with the highest bar
| required to prove defamation, you can avoid any possible
| loss by simply not lying.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| Can't tell if this is satire or not, that's the real irony
| here.
| result2vino wrote:
| I'm glad that you didn't waste effort saying "I am not a
| lawyer" here, because it's very very apparent that you
| aren't.
| AdamN wrote:
| Alex Jones using Twitter/X is on-brand.
| ixtli wrote:
| I hadn't realized how hilarious this is until now
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| > Twitter/X
|
| Why not call it one or the other?
| chairmansteve wrote:
| Call it Twitter. Everyone knows what you mean, and it
| annoys Elon.
| seanw444 wrote:
| I'm not even your average Elon hater, and I still think X
| is a stupid name. Dude should've just kept the name and
| brand that everyone knows already.
| slt2021 wrote:
| old good ole Twitter was when your feed was only those
| you followed.
|
| new X is when your feed what Elon wants you to see and
| react to.
| pohl wrote:
| I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Bluesky
| behaves like the Twitter of yore where you see only who
| you follow.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| This is misleading.
|
| At the top of the feed, there are two tabs: "For you" and
| "Following". If you select "Following", then you only see
| people you follow.
| slt2021 wrote:
| a lot of people use the For You feed by default, since
| Titter makes it very inconvenient to use Following:
| - cannot disable/hide For you - always default for
| you, and no way to default to Following
| riffraff wrote:
| but you don't see _all_ from the people you follow in
| "following", some end up in "for you". So if you want to
| see stuff from people you follow you need to look at the
| rage-bait from the algorithmic feed.
| dmonitor wrote:
| Twitter stopped doing the "follower feed" thing for years
| before Elon bought the website. The propaganda has gotten
| much worse, but let's not pretend Twitter wasn't widely
| considered the worst website on the face of the planet
| (except Facebook) even before Elon took over
| slt2021 wrote:
| 1. I think the main thing is that Elon's own tweets are
| almost always make it to global broadcast via For You
| feed.
|
| 2. This effectively makes everyone see whatever Musk
| personally likes/retweets
|
| 3. It is soft of correct that there is _more_ freedom of
| speech due to slashing /nonexistent moderation
|
| 4. But because algo promotes whatever Musk retweets, it
| makes Musk chief in charge of the algorithm. Whatever
| Musk likes - will be shown to everyone.
|
| 5. Because the rest of the feed is noise and garbage,
| this effectively makes Musk inject a strong signal to a
| feed and makes him a moderator. If censors previously
| would censor by deleting posts, he censors by throwing
| garbage and noisy posts and sprinkling signal in a few
| places
| jowea wrote:
| Elon just likes X. I feel he bought the entire site in
| part due to ego. And it was part of the "everything app"
| branding too IIRC.
| seanw444 wrote:
| I guess the "everything app" aspect would make sense for
| a rebrand. But that aspect feels nowhere close to reality
| yet, so it still seems to odd to me.
| dspillett wrote:
| Or "Twitter, the site desperately trying to be know as
| X".
| hedora wrote:
| My favorite so far is: "The platform [Elon Musk] wants
| you to call "X" for his own sexual gratification". It's
| admittedly too wordy though.
|
| https://www.cahsuesmusk.com/
| recursive wrote:
| Call it X. Everyone knows what you mean and it really
| stirs shit up with people who are emotionally attached to
| the old brand name.
| tom_ wrote:
| Use both and get everybody!
| subsection1h wrote:
| > _Call it X. Everyone knows what you mean_
|
| When I see "X", I think X Window System.
|
| I saw your comment and thought, "I bet this guy is a
| Windows user." I was right! LOL.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?type=comment&sort=byDate&query=au
| tho...
| recursive wrote:
| Congrats on your keen insights.
| teddyh wrote:
| I heard that deadnaming is uncool.
| ianburrell wrote:
| I think the product should be called Twitter and the
| company called X. Sort of like Facebook/Meta. Which is
| what Musk should have done from the beginning, but we can
| fix it for him.
| GJim wrote:
| I believe Xitter (pronounced 'shitter') is the preferred
| satirical term, and one that many deem to be an accurate
| portrayal of the sites user experience since it was taken
| over by Mr Musk.
| cheema33 wrote:
| Xitter is my favorite!
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Maximum clarity
| dionian wrote:
| I don't understand your point
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| Since Musk's acquisition of Twitter, it has increasingly
| become a right wing echo chamber and place to promote
| conspiracy theories. And Alex Jones' InfoWars and Elon
| Musk's Twitter are both likely to show you advertisements
| for supplements of dubious effectiveness and other
| generally scammy products.
|
| So yeah, Jones fits right in there.
| wordofx wrote:
| It really hasn't.
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| My experience disagrees with yours, I suppose.
|
| To me, as a casual user of the platform, that has been
| the trend. I've been visiting less because of it.
| bbor wrote:
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65246394
| there are both in-depth studies and anecdotal evidence
| that suggest hate speech has been growing under Mr Musk's
| tenure.
|
| https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/data-shows-x-
| suspendin... Data Shows X Is Suspending
| Far Fewer Users for Hate Speech
|
| And, finally: Alex Jones was unbanned. That alone is
| proof of rising support for hate speech. He's literally
| been proven to be a lying provocateur in court, it
| doesn't get much clearer than that
| wyager wrote:
| So on the one hand you had Twitter, where the impression
| you would have had in the first few days of November is
| that Trump was probably going to win the election.
|
| On the other hand you had most other platforms like
| Reddit, with relatively heavy-handed moderation, where
| the impression you would have had in the first few days
| of November is that Trump was probably going to lose the
| election.
|
| So when you want to make a prior judgement on an
| extremely consequential outcome, which a posteriori was
| not even close, and one information ecosystem gives you
| the right answer, and most of the other information
| ecosystems give you the wrong answer, which information
| ecosystems do you classify as "echo chambers"?
|
| It's possible that this was just a fluke, but it should
| certainly make you update your priors on which ecosystems
| provide a more representative sample of base reality.
| bandyaboot wrote:
| If I confidently declare ahead of time the result of a
| coin flip, I may turn out to be correct, but my
| confidence was still unjustified. And furthermore, my
| getting it right would not necessitate a "fluke".
|
| I'm on Reddit a fair bit and while it's difficult to know
| the overall biases of the greater community based on what
| I see individually, I don't have a lot of trouble
| believing that there was a bias toward a particular
| _desired_ result. But, I honestly didn't see much in the
| way of a bias one way or the other in the _expected_
| result. I mostly saw a lot of anxiety over not knowing
| what result to expect.
| lazyeye wrote:
| Elections are not remotely a "coin flip" though?
| jkubicek wrote:
| Well sure, but the predicting the results of this
| particular election was very much a coin flip.
| lazyeye wrote:
| I disagree. The media makes it seem like a coin flip, but
| the prediction markets where people are focused on making
| money was accurate. This is compared to the media who are
| more interested in pushing lies and ideology.
| threeseed wrote:
| The prediction markets can be influenced by governments,
| companies etc who have no desire to make short term
| money.
| bandyaboot wrote:
| Personally, I don't care what the "media" was saying. I
| care what the polling data and the election models based
| on the polling data were saying. They were saying pretty
| consistently that this could go either way, but that at
| the same time the result may not turn out to be actually
| that close. Those two aren't incompatible.
| anon373839 wrote:
| > the prediction markets
|
| PredictIt was predicting the opposite outcome up to the
| day of the election.
| inpdx wrote:
| The most historically accurate and least able to be
| gamed, predictit.org, did not overwhelmingly predict
| Trump.
| cmdli wrote:
| Given the large amount of information that Twitter
| claimed that turned out to be false, one correct claim
| doesn't really change much. It goes from around 0/1000
| correct to 1/1001 correct. Even a broken clock is correct
| twice a day.
| tailrecursion wrote:
| One of the two echo chambers was bound to be correct in
| terms of vote counting.
| tailrecursion wrote:
| I take it that left wingers feel that "community notes"
| isn't effective or sufficient to combat right wing
| beliefs that are wrong?
|
| The people on the right seem satisfied for now that they
| can "combat misinformation with more information".
| (That's a misquote by the way, I believe he said better
| information, not more. On second thought, he may have
| said it both ways.)
|
| Has anyone discussed why the right believes this can
| work, and the left doesn't?
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| Bullshit Asymmetry Principle[0] always applies.
|
| By the time Community Notes has appeared, tens or even
| hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of people will
| have seen the misinformation.
|
| Even once Community Notes have appeared, many won't read
| them.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_asymmetry_prin
| ciple
| elektrontamer wrote:
| Why are we so worried about adults reading incorrect
| information? Once they eventually find the info was wrong
| they'll be more sceptical of that source. We know
| policing speech doesn't work, whoever does the policing
| introduces their own biases, this was clear as day with
| the hunter laptop story and how the goverment put
| pressure on social media companies to supress it.
| maxerickson wrote:
| The problem isn't "beliefs that are wrong", the problem
| is that it's Calvinball.
|
| Say something happened, they'll say you don't have proof.
|
| Show proof that it happened, they'll say it isn't a big
| deal.
|
| Demonstrate a negative consequence, they'll say it's an
| isolated incident.
|
| Show that it happens a lot, they'll say the victims
| deserve it.
|
| And so on. Of course I don't have any proof.
| threeseed wrote:
| Community notes isn't scalable.
|
| So when you have people like Musk constantly posting by
| the time a note is added the value of it has long since
| diminished.
|
| Also your left/right wing argument is entirely something
| you've invented.
| bbor wrote:
| Of course, Tim Onion is primarily on Bluesky, other than to
| occasionally rile up Musk
| reaperducer wrote:
| _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?
| delusional wrote:
| 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.
| wmoxam wrote:
| It's a grifting method. Provoke outrage among the less
| informed and watch the money roll in
| mvidal01 wrote:
| This is great!
| chvid wrote:
| I guess this is about the domain name infowars.com which
| belongs to a bankrupt company.
|
| 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?
| plorg wrote:
| 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.
| ackbar03 wrote:
| ... Infowars had a supplements business?
| bbor wrote:
| Oh man, you're in for a treat. Look up some videos on
| youtube, the classic being John Oliver's 2017 piece;
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyGq6cjcc3Q . He's
| adjacent to the newly mainstream right, yes, but he's
| been around for a long time as a more radical+fringe
| actor, and has all the baggage that goes along with that.
| A good portion (most?) of his money was made from selling
| vaguely anti-GMO and pro-masculinity products sold with a
| heavy dose of "big pharma doesn't want you to know this
| one trick".
|
| They ranged from insane horse bone dust stuff to plain
| overpriced vitamins;
| https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/charliewarzel/we-
| sent-a...
| Hikikomori wrote:
| And the Knowledge Fight podcast if you really, really
| wanna get into it. Almost 1000 episodes now.
| https://knowledgefight.com
|
| Behind the bastards also has a few that are good
| summaries if you want something shorter, with the
| Knowledge Fight guys as guests.
| kristopolous wrote:
| Whatever episode they're making right now is going to be
| great.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| Its how they made most of their money.
| frankhorrigan wrote:
| Infowars _is_ a supplements business. It's grifts all the
| way down.
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| Anyone ever wonder why there are very few far-right
| comedians?
| cogman10 wrote:
| It's because they all identify as comedians.
|
| (Yes, this is the one rightwing joke).
| ben_w wrote:
| What do you mean, is Washington DC not a comedy circuit?
| /jk
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| You need to be self-reflective enough to laugh at your
| own BS. Monomaniacs spouting out their grievances don't
| make for the best laughs.
| labster wrote:
| They exist, though few in number. They're the ones loudly
| complaining that you can't tell a (racist) "joke" any
| more.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Most of these things are DTC operations and usually for
| supplements since they are relatively unregulated.
| Turning viewership into money is usually done through ads
| but these guys are fairly toxic to most advertisers.
|
| Supplements are a good alternative for podcasters.
| They're like merch is for musicians etc. but usually run
| as a recurring revenue stream.
|
| Scratch the surface of any of these people and you'll
| find they are like this: huberman, Bryan Johnson, they'll
| all have a DTC business.
| jameshart wrote:
| There is a reason the archetypal scam artist is referred
| to as a 'snake oil salesman'.
| Hamuko wrote:
| Infowars is basically only a vehicle to sell supplements
| and other various crap.
| philjohn wrote:
| That allegedly had elevated levels of lead.
|
| Which, you know what, tracks.
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| Not dissimilar to Fox News or any other media company
| where the main purpose of the content is to get people to
| stay for the ads. Turns out rage-baiting works extremely
| well for driving engagement among certain groups.
| cogman10 wrote:
| The trick that Jones has perfected is the ad pivot. When
| you watch most media, the line between content and ad is
| generally pretty clear. With jones, it was often very
| blurry. Like, he does do regular ads, but he'll also be
| ranting about globalists for 10 minutes and then drop in
| something like "They want to destroy your mind which is
| why you need our deep earth iodine crystals and sea algae
| which is proven to stop globalist mind control."
|
| He does it pretty much out of habit. He literally did an
| ad pivot while on the stand in his court cases.
| Applejinx wrote:
| The literal only way the Onion could mock this man was
| with... reality.
| autoexec wrote:
| Fox news is pushing an agenda first and foremost. The ad
| money was just a bonus. Rupert Murdoch didn't need the ad
| money. Just like with Sky News he was more interested in
| the "reasons of prestige and politics for keeping it"
| than the profits.
| yincrash wrote:
| From the statement -
|
| | 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.
| barryrandall wrote:
| On the internet, telling people what they want to hear
| will always attract an audience. If the audience is
| larger than a thousand or so people, then you can make
| money by leveraging your audience's trust in you to sell
| them supplements, cash for gold schemes, boxed
| mattresses, meal delivery kits, or VPNs.
| grahamj wrote:
| nfts, crypto, low poly trucks etc.
| SahAssar wrote:
| > low poly trucks
|
| My lego builds from when I was 5 were a scam?
| sofixa wrote:
| Of course, it's random nonsense peddling, how else would
| it fund itself other than via a obvious grift? If you're
| gullible enough to watch Alex Jones and believe him,
| you're gullible enough to buy snake oil to increase your
| penis.
| grahamj wrote:
| Snake oil will increase my penis? Where do I sign up?!
| moomin wrote:
| InfoWars _was_ a supplements business. The political
| stuff was just a funnel to sell the supplements, where
| the real money was made.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| Infowars was a supplements business. their business model
| was to brainwash people with conspiracy theories and sell
| supplements that solve the problems they made up
| spacechild1 wrote:
| I didn't know that either. That's absolutely hilarious!
| This could be straight out of a South Park episode.
| ptek wrote:
| >... Infowars had a supplements business? Yeah check out
| an advert for CAVEMAN.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-ZqD9-W1_8 . I used to
| like Infowars 10+ years ago (I'm from New Zealand) when
| the site was a news aggregate site so you could read the
| sources. Now that it is him just talking I don't visit
| the site that often. I remember walking around in a small
| township in Norway (just under 10,000 people) and seeing
| a Infowars sticker on a road light. So yeah he used to
| have massive reach, I don't know if he still does.
| vundercind wrote:
| The ads on some information-channels carry a lot of
| information about the audience, and so, about the
| channel.
|
| Some are dominated by reverse mortgages, supplements,
| buy-gold ads, Franklin "mint", and, if online, crypto
| scams.
|
| This happens to be a convenient way to quickly tell when
| you're headed deep into a particular part of Bullshit
| Country.
|
| [edit] point is I find it unsurprising they had a
| supplement business. It's probably the easiest of the
| above to break into.
| bbor wrote:
| 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."
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/onion-wins-alex-
| jones-i...
| cogman10 wrote:
| They are almost certainly going to sue for illegal
| enrichment. I'm certain that Jones will try and move assets
| and I'm sure he'll get caught doing that.
|
| It means Onion sues Jones will likely be in the headlines a
| fair bit.
| ddoolin wrote:
| He has been getting away with moving assets for months
| now.
| sgt101 wrote:
| I think it's all the assets of the website.
|
| 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.
| grahamj wrote:
| Wait am I understanding this right?
|
| - Collins buys InfoWars
|
| - Auction money ends up going to SH victims
|
| - SH victims have an anti-gun organization set up
|
| - This org enters into a long term ad deal with Collins
|
| - Some of the money therefore flows back to Collins,
| effectively helping with the auction buy
| sgt101 wrote:
| That's what I guessed from the story - I suppose that
| there would be a lot of reticence about buying this site
| from a lot of corporate actors, but maybe there are a lot
| of crazy people who could have bought it if the price was
| right. So, this way it is for sure a "dead" property.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| _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.
| bmitc wrote:
| While their stuff is brilliant at times, I don't actively
| seek it out because it leaves me pretty depressed and
| anxious. The parodies are almost indistinguishable from
| real events these days.
| shagie wrote:
| Alas, "Onion Now: Focus" https://youtu.be/Bex5LyzbbBE
| bmitc wrote:
| Yep, that's my feeling everyday. I would have liked to
| have seen Patrick Warburton cast in that role, though.
| For example, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaghIdSJKvQ
| moate wrote:
| They have become the embodiment of Poe's Law (or the
| world is such a hellscape that Poe's Law is just taken
| for granted now?)
| troyvit wrote:
| I even felt that way reading The Onion's article about
| this and then listening to Alex Jones' rant on Xitter.
| They sounded like they came from the same writer.
| notatoad wrote:
| >I, personally, haven't read onion content in a long, long
| while
|
| The onion was kind of dead for a while under various shitty
| owners, but was bought this year by Jeff Lawson of Twilio
| and is now being run by former NBC reporter Ben Collins.
| The new stuff since the acquisition has been a bit hit or
| miss, but at least they're trying again.
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| They have posted great news segment videos again
| rs999gti wrote:
| > 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?
| sophacles wrote:
| Was it? The constitution lays out slander and libel as
| types of speech that can be censored. The trashy Jones then
| knowingly and maliciously lied about people for profit -
| aka libel and slander. Seems reasonable to take the money
| he made as well as punitive damages.
|
| How is censorship?
| rs999gti wrote:
| > How is censorship?
|
| How does he make future money, you know for living?
|
| The judgement basically means the courts get to garnish
| his wages until the judgement is paid.
|
| Jones is a goof to me and I like seeing him rant and rave
| and wear foil hats. But I don't think anyone should have
| their livelihood taken from them by censorship of the
| courts. EDIT: remember all judgments and penalties cut
| both ways. Today Jones tomorrow someone you follow in the
| media.
|
| Lower the judgement to 1M USD (EDIT: or something
| reasonable) and let's move on.
| egoisticalgoat wrote:
| Not sure how it works in the US, but e.g. in germany only
| a certain portion of your wages go towards debts, they
| let you have a certain portion for yourself since you
| need it to live.
| sophacles wrote:
| His livelihood wasn't taken. His assets were taken
| because he did damages and has to pay for those damages.
|
| He can go get all sorts of jobs. Yeah his wages will be
| garnished, but that doesn't mean his whole paycheck -
| just the lesser of 25% of the paycheck or 30x minimum
| wage. He can make money and a living with that just fine.
| Same as I'd expect for anyone intentionally lying and
| hurting people for money - whether I "follow" them or
| not.
|
| Perhaps you should find some reputable sources for
| information, instead of relying on the proven liar to
| tell the truth about his situation?
| rs999gti wrote:
| > Perhaps you should find some reputable sources for
| information
|
| Did you read my post? Jones is a source of entertainment
| for me.
|
| Unlike most of the people who replied, I don't like
| cancel culture.
| tptacek wrote:
| It's OK to have an unpopular opinion here, but not OK to
| cast aspersions on people who object to that opinion.
| sophacles wrote:
| Interesting position...
|
| You dont like cancel culture, but support Jones - a
| person who is literally being discussed for encouraging
| his followers to shut down the people saying their kids
| were killed.
|
| I mean the statements about crisis actors and whatnot
| were maliciously false, and pure slander. But to those
| who beleived them, Jones was advocating for them to be
| cancelled - that is they should be stopped from spreading
| lies and that they should be locked up and sent away.
|
| Odd juxtaposition.
| triceratops wrote:
| > Today Jones tomorrow someone you follow in the media
|
| _Anyone_ who knowingly spreads lies about a person and
| causes them harm should face legal consequences.
| result2vino wrote:
| > Today Jones tomorrow someone you follow in the media.
|
| Christ. As a non-American, this comment says a lot about
| the hilariously broken state of your political landscape.
|
| "It could happen to one of your guys, and that somehow
| makes it bad!"
|
| Anyone that does what Alex did deserves his punishment,
| and I'd be against anyone that did what he did, even if I
| previously "followed" them.
| tptacek wrote:
| _The constitution lays out slander and libel as types of
| speech that can be censored_
|
| I don't think defamation law is unconstitutional, but, no
| it doesn't.
| labster wrote:
| The US courts have ruled that there are time, place, and
| manner limits on freedom of speech.
| tptacek wrote:
| I don't think defamation law is unconstitutional.
| labster wrote:
| Neither do I
| qingcharles wrote:
| Lawfare? This is literally how defamation works.
|
| If someone said on the Internet said that rs999gti was a
| "tax-evading, pyramid-scheming, mullet-wearing, karaoke-
| ruining, ferret-hoarding, snake-oil-selling, cereal-with-
| water-eating, grammar-mangling, table-manner-less,
| engagement-ring-pawning, salad-dodging, traffic-cone-
| stealing, apology-dodger," and it wasn't true, I think
| you'd probably like to sue them and take their money too.
| rs999gti wrote:
| > Lawfare?
|
| Yes the court's judgment is so high, 1B USD, that he
| cannot make money without it being garnished. How does he
| get back to work? I personally do not think anyone should
| lose their livelihood over speech, NOTE: I did not say
| free speech. What he did is reprehensible but not enough
| that he is basically black balled from making a living.
| Penalties yes, loss of livelihood no.
| gonzo wrote:
| Alex is free to work at the local car wash.
| jpk wrote:
| Having your wages garnished doesn't mean you starve to
| death. He's perfectly capable of making a living,
| supporting himself and his dependents, if any, but his
| ability to build wealth will be restricted. I don't know
| the particulars of this case, but generally:
|
| "The garnishment amount is limited to 25% of your
| disposable earnings for that week (what's left after
| mandatory deductions) or the amount by which your
| disposable earnings for that week exceed 30 times the
| federal minimum hourly wage, whichever is less."
|
| https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/if-wages-are-
| garnish...
| kabdib wrote:
| $1B is the amount it took to get him to stop. He could
| have stopped earlier, and had ample opportunity, but that
| was apparently his price.
| jandrese wrote:
| "Lawfare" is when people break the law and are actually
| prosecuted for it even though they are rich and right
| wing and think they laws don't apply to them.
|
| Alex Jones wasn't even subtle about it. He was getting
| judgements telling him to stop spouting blatant lies
| about victims of a mass shooting and he just doubled down
| on the lies. Repeatedly. The courts kept giving him more
| rope and he kept tying more nooses.
| sed_zeppelin wrote:
| 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?)
| Macha wrote:
| It looks like it's down now?
| joezydeco wrote:
| This seems like an incredible opportunity to see if it's
| possible to reprogram InfoWars readers away from the hate and
| the conspiracy theories.
|
| 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?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > This seems like an incredible opportunity to see if it's
| possible to reprogram InfoWars readers away from the hate
| and the conspiracy theories.
|
| Not a chance; they just flee to other outlets. Even Fox
| News saw huge numbers of people jump to NewsMax and OANN
| and whatnot.
| joezydeco wrote:
| The trick is to do it _without the readers noticing_.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Not terribly hard as Info warriors aren't known for being
| detail oriented. Credulity is somewhat of a requirement
| to be sincere.
| AI_beffr wrote:
| what is the difference, really, between the way the word
| "hate" is used now and the they the word "sin" was used 200
| years ago?
| Maken wrote:
| I like how he _still_ tries to sell his merchandise until the
| very last moment.
| plorg wrote:
| 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.
| Suppafly wrote:
| > 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.
|
| He's spent the whole time since losing the lawsuit
| illegally shifting assets to his parents and they
| bankruptcy courts haven't seemed to be able to stop that.
| Conscat wrote:
| For what it's worth, a lawyer _did_ ask the presiding
| Judge Christopher Lopez to tell Alex Jones he definitely
| can't do that and solidify this in writing the terms of
| bankruptcy, and the judge simply refused to even try on
| the basis that everyone involved is an adult and ought to
| know better.
| ryandrake wrote:
| 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.
| kristopolous wrote:
| I like the twitter comments. They're already baking how it's
| part of the secret globalist plot.
|
| See also https://reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/ if you haven't
| yet.
| mooreds wrote:
| "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."
|
| Glorious.
| brabel wrote:
| That part hurt a little bit, recently had to start looking at
| family just like this.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| It felt like coming home here.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| "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."
| bityard wrote:
| That is the funniest thing I have read in a very long time.
| xenospn wrote:
| I'm cracking up
| glonq wrote:
| Wow, crazy to watch all the bootlickers and nutters in his feed
| who are angry about this.
| QuercusMax wrote:
| They're all "verified" (paid) accounts too, which is why
| Twitter is such a cesspool. They sort paid accounts to the
| top.
| bandyaboot wrote:
| Freemium speech?
| pacomerh wrote:
| 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.
| thecosas wrote:
| 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.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| I saw the onion post and didnt really believe it.
| emchammer wrote:
| 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?
| daft_pink wrote:
| Not sure if this is true or just another Onion article.
| llm_trw wrote:
| The onion has not yet bought the times.
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| When they do I hope it's Infowars that first reports the
| deal.
| zrail wrote:
| > yet
| zemo wrote:
| why would they buy something that no longer exists?
| https://theonion.com/new-york-times-to-cease-publication/
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| NBC is reporting it too. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-
| news/onion-wins-alex-jones-i..., reported on HN by elsewhen at
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42136327.
|
| So... I guess it's real? Still feels surreal...
| spacemanspiff01 wrote:
| The past 10 years feels surreal...
| Maken wrote:
| Infowars itself confirms it:
| https://www.infowars.com/posts/watch-live-last-infowars-tran...
| Kye wrote:
| Perfectly balanced, as all things should be. Thanks, Tim Onion.
|
| https://bsky.app/profile/bencollins.bsky.social/post/3law23r...
| sofixa wrote:
| This sounds like an Onion headline.
|
| And to add extra spice, they're actually doing it for a good
| cause, educating about gun safety in cooperation with nonprofits
| and the families of children killed in the Sandy Hook massacre.
|
| Obligatory fuck Alex Jones with a bat with rusty barbed wire. He
| profited off the misery of murdered kids, this is beyond low.
| wl wrote:
| Everytown isn't an educational organization and they have no
| gun safety programs. It's Michael Bloomberg's gun control
| advocacy group.
| zemo wrote:
| The first time I heard about it was from an Onion headline
| about it: https://theonion.com/heres-why-i-decided-to-buy-
| infowars/
| xena wrote:
| God I wish I could contribute to that.
| lukev wrote:
| Good news for you: https://membership.theonion.com
| cranberryturkey wrote:
| What a perfect end to 30 years of lies.
| matthewsinclair wrote:
| All I can do now is hope and prey that this ends up being the
| literal dictionary definition of "Poe's Law". #goodspeed
| lenerdenator wrote:
| Beautiful.
|
| The poet they sent couldn't have done better.
| dogleash wrote:
| Funny concept. Shame that The Onion's writing these days so mid.
| aaomidi wrote:
| I think it's more that the world is now the onion.
| tuyiown wrote:
| One option for the onion is to end being an entertaining
| opinion journal with very nuanced and layered (intended)
| points of view. They already are almost there, what place do
| they have where so many in the media are parodies of
| themselves ?
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| It's like the conundrum that the writers of South Park had,
| reality became worse than the worst they could think of. To
| the point where they really struggled when Trump actually won
| in 2016.
| philipov wrote:
| If life could stop imitating art now, I'd appreciate it very
| much.
| dionian wrote:
| Kids these days will never know how funny the onion used to be
| They used to distribute hard copies in big cities because
| people actually read it
| afavour wrote:
| They started distributing hard copies again to folks who sign
| up.
|
| The lack of copies on street corners has a lot more to do
| with the collapse in print advertising revenues than it does
| the jokes printed inside.
| skiman10 wrote:
| I actually have a copy that I stumbled across recently at a
| book store near me. I'm sure it won't be like the old days,
| but it was really cool to pick a hard copy up while out and
| about in town.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| You can buy hard copies again if you subscribe. They used to
| give it away free in the 1990s because the world wasn't as
| hyper-capitalistic and it was practical to publish a free
| paper and put metal boxes on the street to distribute it
| while making a modest profit with advertising.
| ascendantlogic wrote:
| I think the Onion is as good as it ever was. The issue now is
| that the real news is so wild and unhinged the Onion doesn't
| have that segment cornered anymore.
| dogleash wrote:
| Oh come on now. The world wasn't just sent to live with it's
| auntie and uncle in Bel-Air. The distressed sullen worldview
| might be new to you, but people certainly had it back when I
| found the Onion regularly quite enjoyable too.
| jayd16 wrote:
| How is the Onion supposed to top the actual cabinet
| appointments, for example?
| rsynnott wrote:
| In 2004, George W Bush was re-elected. At that time, a
| plausible Onion story might have been that George W Bush
| was going to appoint a vaccine denier HHS and someone who
| was investigated by the DOJ as AG, and that would have
| been, like, mildly funny (which was always the Onion's
| thing, really; it was almost never _great_), because haha,
| the president popularly considered to be a bit incompetent
| is appointing obviously unsuitable people, how amusing, but
| also, well, a bit of fun, not real. (Actually, if anything
| I think this might have strayed a bit too far into
| absurdity for the Onion's liking, particularly Gaetz.)
|
| Fast-forward to 2024, and, well... It just doesn't work as
| well anymore. Like, imagine an Onion story about Trump's
| appointments. What could it possibly say that would be
| stranger than the reality?
| BizarroLand wrote:
| Maybe appointing Paula Deen as the secretary of health.
| Show a "food pyramid" that is just multiple pies stacked
| on top of each other with a side of melted butter to wash
| it down with, and her vice secretary is a disgraced
| police officer with over 800 sanctions kitted out in full
| milspec riot gear whose job it is to beat every child who
| fails to eat 15 pies a day into submission?
| PrismCrystal wrote:
| I think the problem is that American politics has become so
| polarized, that humor anywhere is more likely to be partisan
| political and written directly in reaction to that week's
| events. The development has been observed for late-night
| television, and it's not a new thing with _The Onion_ either:
| already over a decade ago, friends who had grown up on
| classic 1990s _Onion_ were bemoaning this shift. Sure, _The
| Onion_ had used political figures in jokes before ("Congress
| Debates Rush", "Clinton Declares Self President For Life")
| but those politicians could have stood for anything; there
| was very little reference to specific policies or
| controversies.
| darepublic wrote:
| The Onion youtube vids of the late 2000's were phenomenal. It
| was all downhill from there imo. Take a look at this recent
| video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2niC4ACCp20. I don't
| like Taylor Swift but this is just not funny. I don't see
| what the point of it is is.
|
| Compare to this celebrity satire of the golden era:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9QisdRPwEM.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| When you reach the point where you are cross checking a
| comedy website's comedy against itself you might have
| caught a case of the old.
|
| I remember hearing my dad talk about how SNL isn't as funny
| as it used to be, too. It happens to the best of us.
| slater wrote:
| "[Thing] that just so coincided with my formative years was
| the absolute best. it's been downhill ever since" is a tale
| as old as the hills.
| TeaBrain wrote:
| That is true, but the Onion is also a shell of its former
| self. The Onion became a household name because of how
| widely consumed it used to be. It doesn't have anywhere
| near that reach or cultural influence today.
| rightbyte wrote:
| The new one is really bad. Feels so fake. And the anchor
| can't role play. The old one is so much better. If you
| don't listen, you don't even get that it is a joke.
| donatj wrote:
| Nah, my dude. 90's Onion was peak, todays Onion is weak.
|
| https://imgur.com/a/Jhk4CPq
| jnwatson wrote:
| Did you read the link? Top notch comedy writing.
| hersko wrote:
| I think the Babylon Bee has been a good replacement.
| skulk wrote:
| I opened Babylon Bee and all I saw was mockery of already
| marginalized people. I guess that's funny if you hate them.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| The Babylon Bee _occasionally_ takes a good swipe at liberals
| and democrats.
|
| The Onion will go down in history as one of the most
| influential satire projects of all time, and is filled with
| genuinely talented writers and comedians. Even their early
| Youtube work was prescient and brilliant.
|
| They aren't even playing the same game.
| bediger4000 wrote:
| Honest question: how so? The Onion has always billed itself
| as a "news" source, and parodied both form and content of
| traditional newspapers and TV news. The Babylon Bee seems to
| just put out jokes, without much of a unifying thematic
| framework.
| metamet wrote:
| Babylon Bee notoriously punches down and is the epitome of
| the "one joke" trope.
|
| They're an uninspired impersonation of The Onion, with a
| clear political purpose.
| dvngnt_ wrote:
| i disagree, they try to be a more right-wing version of the
| onion but they lack the surrealism of the onion.
|
| comparing both instagram pages, BB posts mostly political
| content and they're all critical of democrats/liberals. the
| onion's page has much more variety
|
| https://youtu.be/8wHMaJ6AtNs?feature=shared&t=8
| elsonrodriguez wrote:
| Browsing their site I found an article that is making light
| of the suppression of women voters by using sexist tropes.
|
| > Hundreds of thousands of women across America were left
| standing utterly clueless as to what to do at a voting booth
| after their husbands failed to tell them who to vote for.
|
| > Voting at several polling stations ground to a halt after
| all of the booths became occupied by bewildered women. "This
| is a disaster," said poll worker John Bingham. "We've had
| thirty women taking up every booth for the past three hours,
| just staring like deer in headlights. We offered to bring
| them lunch while they made their choice, but they couldn't
| decide on a restaurant."
|
| > At publishing time, voting stations had been forced to
| designate one voting booth for men only to allow voting to
| continue.
|
| Given the history of women's right to vote, current laws
| causing women to needlessly die, and that many women today
| are undoubtedly being coerced by spouses to vote a certain
| way, calling this simply tone deaf would be extremely
| charitable. It is only truly funny if you have "women, am I
| right" as one of your shibboleths. Without that, it is clear
| misogyny.
|
| All this to say I don't think a site promoting sexist views
| is a good alternative for a site that has made a master-class
| punchline out of trying to take a terrorist bigot off the
| air.
| dlachausse wrote:
| > the suppression of women voters
|
| That's the joke. It's 2024 and that's not a thing anymore
| in America.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| The Babylon Bee has gotten better, but it's still pretty
| amateurish compared to the best of The Onion. It's nice to
| have a satirical publication that leans the other way for
| balance.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| LOL conservatives
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| I've been reading it for 20 years and it's as good as it's ever
| been
|
| https://theonion.com/biden-trump-die-2-minutes-apart-holding...
| rideontime wrote:
| It's been on the upswing ever since it was purchased this year.
| It's time to come back.
| antonyt wrote:
| I don't think it's changed that much. There's so much more
| comedy and parody content out there these days that our
| collective standards have changed. The onion's heyday was when
| the internet was a lot smaller.
| binarymax wrote:
| 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.
| bckr wrote:
| I actually almost fainted laughing when I read this and then
| some of the coping responses on X. I needed this today. What a
| good move.
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| Financial Ruin and Mockery seem appropriate for the peddlers of
| vitriolic clickbait.
| consumer451 wrote:
| Tim Onion's (Ben Collins) statement on Bluesky: [0]
|
| > 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...
| gorbachev wrote:
| Is that enough to tank the market with a fire sale? Probably
| not.
| TomK32 wrote:
| I'd chip in just to have that shit destroyed and see them
| selling onions instead.
| josefresco wrote:
| 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!
| consumer451 wrote:
| This is exactly what I was thinking. Being funny is great,
| but for years people will continue to go to the website not
| knowing what has transpired.
| tialaramex wrote:
| The _core idea_ of satire, which is often missed in
| supposedly satirical works is that you should not only make
| fun of the thing you don 't believe, but you should also
| explain what you do believe under the cover of pretending
| to dismiss it.
|
| For example everybody knows Swift's Modest Proposal does
| not seriously intend that the problems in Ireland ought to
| be fixed by _literally eating children_ , but if you read
| it, the proposal also very clearly explains what _should_
| be done, in the form of taxation of the wealthy absentee
| landlords (many of them English) for example - it just
| couches all these boring but entirely reasonable steps as
| ludicrous and easily dismissed while insisting that eating
| babies is a good idea.
| josefresco wrote:
| > The core idea of satire, which is often missed in
| supposedly satirical works is that you should not only
| make fun of the thing you don't believe, but you should
| also explain what you do believe under the cover of
| pretending to dismiss it.
|
| I often suggest that satire is a dangerous double edged
| sword and not a good primary vehicle for positive change.
| Part of your audience will understand it's satire, but a
| significant part maybe even a majority, might take is as
| genuine or worse come to embrace/support the satirized.
|
| I believe we ask and expect too much of satire which
| relies heavily on hypocrisy and shame, two concepts that
| no longer carry the same weight.
|
| Examples: South Park, The Colbert Report, SNL, The Onion
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| I definitely see the problems you are pointing out, but
| ultimately these calls from you and gp to forms of
| responsibility or to be a "vehicle for positive change"
| of satirical or otherwise funny things leaves a bad taste
| in my mouth. I just sometimes want things to be
| cathartic, I don't really care if they are pushing the
| needle of the world's ills. I want to be able to laugh
| and not necessarily be a better person for it! There has
| got to be some space for that too, right?
|
| And ok, if there is some committee somewhere to dictate
| that all satire must be "responsible", must follow its
| founding Swiftian maxim, then fine, we don't have to call
| it that. But whatever it _is_ can still be good, can help
| those find a little fun in an absurd world. We should
| care as much about the simply depressed people as we do
| the possibly confused or evil.
| tialaramex wrote:
| I don't think there's a committee, I'm pretty sure I do
| not have veto over online comedy. Think of this as a
| pointed criticism of how things could be better, not as a
| tearing down of what is good. And you don't need to be
| made a better person per se, but my argument is that the
| _work_ should try to offer that, not that you must accept
| it when offered.
|
| I don't need to use a toilet on a train most of the time,
| but I think long distance trains obviously should all
| have toilets - even if I didn't need one this trip.
|
| In larger works the other side of the coin needn't be in
| the next paragraph. When I read Private Eye for example
| the cover headline "MAN IN HAT SITS ON CHAIR" isn't doing
| anything beyond poking fun at the King (the crown is just
| a hat, the throne is just a chair) but the magazine
| overall funds a lot of serious investigative journalism
| and sheds light on important issues. Years before a TV
| drama made it into a government scandal problems with
| Horizon and getting justice for those wrongly convicted
| were extensively discussed in the Eye for example.
| dogleash wrote:
| > I believe we ask and expect too much of satire
|
| Yes, if you expect anything from satire you expect too
| much. Let it be art, not propaganda.
|
| Allow yourself to find poor execution of agreeable
| messages distasteful. Allow yourself to enjoy good
| execution of messages you disagree with.
| bckr wrote:
| > Let it be art, not propaganda.
|
| My friend I have some news for you.
|
| Edit: almost ended it there but remembered what website
| I'm on.
|
| I don't think there's a material difference between art
| and propaganda. The art you like is merely the propaganda
| which you do not question.
| chairmansteve wrote:
| So..... Monet's Water Lilies is propaganda....
|
| What is it's message?
| parpfish wrote:
| Floating flowers rule, land flowers drool
| bravura wrote:
| "The classical tradition of "accurate" painting (Raphael
| and Michelangelo and Rembrandt) is not exciting.
|
| But we're not ready to go full on free
| jazz/postmodernist/de-constructionist. You're not ready
| for it yet, but your kids are going to love it."
| bckr wrote:
| For a contemporary example, what is the message of a
| painting of a watermelon?
|
| It could be merely that watermelons are beautiful. Or it
| could be that the artist supports the people of
| Palestine.
|
| For a less extreme example, think about the paintings of
| Norman Rockwell. Are they just pretty images? Or do they
| communicate norms?
|
| Think also about what is censored vs what is not
| censored.
| dmd wrote:
| You can execute the message "We think you, and people
| like you, should be killed" as well as you like, I'm
| still not going to enjoy it.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Let it be art, not propaganda_
|
| You cannot "explain what you do believe under the cover
| of pretending to dismiss it" without blurring the line
| between propaganda and art. That is true of both the best
| art and propaganda. If someone disagrees with the
| message, or coopts it, it's propaganda.
| jrflowers wrote:
| > Allow yourself to find poor execution of agreeable
| messages distasteful. Allow yourself to enjoy good
| execution of messages you disagree with.
|
| This makes sense. If you find yourself understanding and
| judging messages based simply off of their merits then
| you have failed to insert an arbitrary aesthetic filter
| into your cognitive process. The wisest sages know to
| value style over substance
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >I often suggest that satire is a dangerous double edged
| sword and not a good primary vehicle for positive change.
|
| When I write with the intent of my words being read at
| face value I get downvoted, flagged or my post get sent
| into the void by some AI depending on platform.
|
| So satire and memes it is.
| dogcomplex wrote:
| Those are all still far more positive than negative
| examples, even if they each spawned small contingents of
| people who don't get the irony. Plus, if you know that's
| gonna happen anyway, then steer the dumb ironic
| interpretations towards something equally useful - or so
| ridiculous it at least educates other people.
| zahlman wrote:
| > I believe we ask and expect too much of satire which
| relies heavily on hypocrisy and shame, two concepts that
| no longer carry the same weight.
|
| Indeed. It's amazing to me how many people I encounter
| these days who don't appear to consider hypocrisy a moral
| failing.
| rusk wrote:
| Satire is not a tool for change. In fact the opposite as
| laughter sublimates the emotions that would otherwise
| lead to action (cf Orwell's 1984).
|
| However people are not always in a position to change
| things and satire can be a useful outlet for venting, but
| culturally can also be good for providing talking points.
|
| Southpark and the Onion strike a chord with me the others
| less so, I think because they believe that they are
| agents for change.
|
| I love John Oliver though. He follows up his rants with
| some sensible ideas sometimes. Not everyone's cup of tea
| though for sure.
| jancsika wrote:
| > The core idea of satire
|
| I've never read this definition from any historical
| author or famous literary critic. I think you made this
| up yourself from first principles-- am I right on that?
|
| In any case, this definition would make a special case
| out of _Animal Farm_ which is probably the most famous
| satire. I cringe imagining Orwell have one of the animals
| "dismiss" his preferred theoretical vision of good
| governance as a wink to the audience. I don't even think
| Orwell presumed to know what that would look like.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Satire requires a good deal of intelligence and education
| to both write and consume. Without those two inputs,
| satire is a propaganda.
|
| When you take a satirical concept and ratchet up the
| absurdity such that only ignorant (willfully or
| otherwise) people believe it, the result can be a
| powerful influence over them. Conspiracy theories often
| use this approach, as do talking heads on some networks.
|
| Think about how early Stephen Colbert skits often
| comprised of him acting like Bill O'Reilly; not saying
| funny things in the style of O'Reilly, but merely
| imitating him. The difference between satire and
| propaganda is often packaging and audience.
|
| For another example, you can look at posts of people who
| read Onion articles without realizing they are satire.
| These people are often pissed off, so much so that they
| share a 3 year old article on social media to spread the
| word.
| rusk wrote:
| The original idea of satire was to make fun of unjust
| leaders. It doesn't have to be as sophisticated as swift
| at all. It just has to strike a chord (originally,
| literally) with the audience.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _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."
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/14/business/media/alex-
| jones...
| burnt-resistor wrote:
| 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.
|
| - Radium girls
|
| - Eugenics experiments
|
| - Forced sterilization
|
| - ~600 Tennessee sober "drunk driving" arrests
| ImHereToVote wrote:
| - Project Timber Sycamore
|
| - The Douma Gas hoax
|
| Fun times.
| Lammy wrote:
| > documented conspiracies that aren't hypotheticals
|
| And, ironically since it's what launched Jones' career,
| Bohemian Club & Grove:
| https://x.com/abbieasr/status/1462953203067240450
|
| Luckily my conscience is clean because I discovered the
| existence of that place not from AJ but by studying the
| North Pacific Coast Railroad, which used to go directly to
| The Grove in Sonoma:
|
| https://archive.org/details/bwb_W7-BOG-168
|
| https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1SkFrgLj-
| TR4gyw9Y4m...
|
| For anyone so inclined, the path of the NPCR makes a
| beautiful Sunday drive!
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXh0bQIZw1g
| Lammy wrote:
| > And, ironically since it's what launched Jones' career,
| Bohemian Club & Grove:
| https://x.com/abbieasr/status/1462953203067240450
|
| Too late to edit but I just realized the version of this
| I linked removed the "Bohemian Club" that was present in
| this older version. Strange!
| https://x.com/abbieasr/status/1312512066071060480
| akira2501 wrote:
| > 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.
| dmvdoug wrote:
| _The Onion_ is truly a national treasure.
| kobalsky wrote:
| they are fueled by clickbait, and they've promoted the
| practice.
|
| it's probably the first site I've manually added to my dns
| blacklist.
| shevis wrote:
| My friend, you have eaten the onion.
| kobalsky wrote:
| I'm not from the US so naturally they've confused me in
| the past.
|
| more than once I caught myself clicking on a shared
| headline of theirs, so I've added them to my DNS
| blocklist to avoid giving them clicks, decades ago.
|
| my problem is not with their obviously ridiculous
| headlines, but the ones that hit the grey area, where
| it's as much good humor as a screamer is good horror.
| consteval wrote:
| The thing is the onion is pretty much always ridiculous,
| so if some of them are in a "gray area" I think that
| moreso speaks to the overall climate or your own personal
| biases.
| mjmsmith wrote:
| Area man is consistently fooled by The Onion.
| TZubiri wrote:
| Got im
| DirkH wrote:
| I find this comment so funny I burst out laughing. I cannot
| tell whether you're serious.
| TeeMassive wrote:
| 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.
| blackguardx wrote:
| Can you elaborate? What was the offer? They won a judgement
| over $1B.
|
| Also, I don't think their agenda is political, it is
| personal.
| TeeMassive wrote:
| Jones is not worth $1B. He's barely worth a million with
| the lawsuits and legal costs; thus the bankruptcy. He
| offered them about $100M over 20 years or something like
| that but the SH families lawyers refused.
|
| I've watched the trial, the SH lawyers are not loyal to the
| victims and families.
| consteval wrote:
| Right, the intention of the suit was to personally harm
| Jones as retribution for the immeasurable harm he has
| caused them.
|
| They don't need money, I'm sure they have enough. They
| denied his money because that isn't the point - they want
| to mock him.
|
| And, I fully support them. They're in a unique position
| and frankly I'm very impressed at their restraint in
| choosing the legal system over violence. If I were Jones,
| I would consider myself very lucky.
| pyrale wrote:
| Maybe the families were more interested in fixing the issue
| than in receiving some blood money in exchange for continued
| harm.
| TeeMassive wrote:
| Well they asked for money, not "fixing the issue", which is
| not enforceable anyway without violating the 1st so that's
| not even a power the court has. Alex Jones will still be
| able to speak and profit from it, just not under the
| Infowars brand.
| Volundr wrote:
| 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.
| TeeMassive wrote:
| > Did the original offer include shutting down Infowars?
|
| That was part of the SH families' lawyer final argument to
| the jury.
|
| > There is more to this life than money.
|
| Sure. But there's not much a civil lawsuit can ask outside
| of damages and reparations.
| Volundr wrote:
| And yet seeing the case through to the end instead of
| taking the first offer has seen Infowars taken from Alex
| Jones. I don't speak for the families, but if I were in
| their shoes that would be far more valuable to me than
| maximizing my payout.
| triceratops wrote:
| I don't think the families wanted money. They wanted to ruin
| his life.
| latexr wrote:
| Those links don't work for me. But these do:
|
| https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:x4qyokjtdzgl7gmqhsw4ajqj/po...
|
| https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:x4qyokjtdzgl7gmqhsw4ajqj/po...
| consumer451 wrote:
| 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.
| latexr wrote:
| Indeed, your links now work for me. My post got a few
| upvotes, so I don't think I was the only one experiencing
| the failure.
| consumer451 wrote:
| You were correct. When you replied, I tried my links and
| indeed they did not work at the time.
| tombert wrote:
| They don't have to do much, it's already very funny and very
| stupid.
| notahacker wrote:
| Yeah, my first thought was "the Sandy Hook parents chipped in
| for you to _leave it as it is_? "
| imiric wrote:
| > We are planning on making it a very funny, very stupid
| website.
|
| 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.
| consumer451 wrote:
| Please note that Bsky servers appear to be suffering under the
| load of 15 new users per second, with bursts as high 133 new
| users per second!
| TZubiri wrote:
| Absolutely poetic.
|
| 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.
| jacknews wrote:
| I'm very much not a fan of Q-anon and related subcultures, but
| the sandy-hook award of $1.5 billion is obviously ridiculous, and
| is clearly just a government/institutional exercise in
| dictatorial/systemic power.
|
| There is no possible way that someone ranting on the internet can
| cause 1.5 billion of emotional damage or whatever the claim was.
|
| In particular, the libel (and it should be libel, making claims
| that are not true, rather than 'defamation' which is merely
| slurring them), should be from a credible source. Alex Jones is
| obviously not a credible source in this, or any case, and is
| unlikely to have caused any material harm (loss of jobs etc) to
| the 'victims'.
|
| I mean, good riddance to Alex Jones, but the tools and methods
| used were entirely inappropriate to a liberal democracy, where
| you prevail with better arguments.
| fisherjeff wrote:
| It was a civil case, so no government/prosecutor, and the jury
| awarded much more than plaintiffs asked for.
|
| EDIT: Also you can disagree with the amount, but the award is
| literally the jury saying that the plaintiffs "prevailed with
| better arguments"
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| That doesnt mean it was a reasonable amount.
| pohuing wrote:
| No but it dispels the opening statement of gp about
| supposed dictatorial power.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Well, it _moves_ the claim. Now the dictatorial power
| lies with the jury.
|
| The normal corrective for such a thing is to appeal the
| amount of the award, on the grounds that it is clearly
| unreasonable. For Alex Jones, it probably didn't matter -
| he was bankrupt either way, so the extreme amount of the
| award is just a middle finger from the jury, with no
| practical effect.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I didnt see anything about a dictatorial power, just a
| complaint about incompatibility with liberal democracy,
| and I tend to agree.
|
| That can come from broken systems as easily as a
| dictator.
|
| It is hard for me to imagine what would support 150
| million per plaintiff. That is and order of magnitude
| more civil damages than are often awarded for cold
| blooded murder.
|
| Everyone hates Alex Jones, and I don't like him either,
| but that shouldn't trump justice and proportionality. It
| makes me think that the penalty was for more than what
| was on trial, and rather a reflection of mob justice by
| other means.
| burkaman wrote:
| > clearly just a government/institutional exercise in
| dictatorial/systemic power
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| fair, I missed that and read the system version, which is
| also there
| righthand wrote:
| What is unreasonable about it?
|
| Someone should get to lie and spread conspiracy theories
| for decades and have to only pay a little? The man had been
| doing it because he could, not because he didn't understand
| it was a lie. Then when called out and asked to stop, he
| kept doing it.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| The amount of money versus the damage
| righthand wrote:
| The damage is tremendous, there are still people that are
| radicalized by it and spouting his lies today. Doesn't
| sound like an unreasonable amount of money to me. What is
| unreasonable about the amount of money, what should have
| it been?
| jacknews wrote:
| oh f off. 'being radicalized' is not damage. That
| argument fully supports the assertion that this is a
| government/systemic effort.
|
| show some actual, material damage.
| righthand wrote:
| Material damage would be collecting money by spreading
| lies about dead children...1.5billion sounds perfect.
| consteval wrote:
| Being radicalized is damage. Some of those people
| radicalized will go on to perform mass shootings,
| literally. I would wager heavily that the risk of someone
| being a mass shooter amongst Jone's audience is much
| higher versus the average population.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| damage to whom? Is that who got the the 1.5 billion? the
| money didnt go to fund deradicalization. It went to 15
| people to compensate for the harm that those people
| specifically suffered.
|
| If you are saying the fine is an appropriate punishment
| because of harm done to some other people, than that
| itself is illiberal. That isn't what Jones was on trial
| for.
|
| That is intentionally giving an excessive penalty because
| you want to punish them for something else, that
| certainly wasn't litigated, and may not even be a crime.
|
| Do you understand how people might be uncomfortable with
| that logic?
| consteval wrote:
| It's not my logic, the jury decided it. I guess take it
| up with them.
|
| The fines are mostly punitive, which I frankly support.
| Why? Because Jones deserves it. If anything, Jones should
| consider himself lucky to be surrounded by such
| outstanding citizens that they go through the legal
| system instead of taking matters into their own hands.
|
| Maybe if it was someone else I would care more. But for
| him, I can't bring myself to care much. Maybe that's
| illogical, but I don't mind much. Life is always a case-
| by-case basis.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I think people should also care about the integrity of
| the court system, and it should not be adapted on a case
| by case basis.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Why bother? Jones didn't provide credible evidence for
| the bullshit claim that the Sandy Hook massacre was fake,
| so he's being paid back in his own coin. Fuck him.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| that isnt the damage that was assessed at 1.5 billion,
| and isn't what he was paying for. It is damages done
| specifically to 15 families for emotional pain and
| suffering.
| righthand wrote:
| Yes pain and suffering caused by lies used to radicalize
| people about a tragic event. Cute little caveat you're
| willing to carve out in your head for lies, though.
|
| Still waiting on your more appropriate number.
| fisherjeff wrote:
| This is a good take:
|
| https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:s6j27rxb3ic2rxw73ixgqv2p
| /po...
|
| If he wanted to avoid losing a billion and a half
| dollars, he sure went about it oddly.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| 5'500'000'000 people on the internet, which means an
| average of 27 cents per user. To say that there is "no
| possible way" of reaching that level of emotional damages
| is a stretch.
| jacknews wrote:
| This look like the same argument the record companies use
| for piracy.
|
| Oh "we would have made 10 billion if everyone downloading
| illegally would have paid." Except of course most people
| wouldn't have bothered if it wasn't free.
|
| So, how much is 1.5B, per 'victim' of some obvious
| crackpots' rants.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| he wasn't paying for emotional damages done to the users
| of the internet. He was paying for emotional damages to
| 15 plaintiffs. 100 million is a lot of emotional
| suffering. Civil damages would have been lower if he
| killed the children himself. OJ paid 30 million civil
| damages for murder, and that was outstandingly high.
|
| The courts might as well have assigned a 1 trillion
| dollars of damages.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| You could argue that he was fined for wilfully
| communicating his lies to everyone on the internet (at
| least in the anglosphere). The award made by the jury
| (not the court) was explicitly for punitive damages. They
| picked a number to ensure he would be wiped out
| financially, and I think he deserves every bit of suck he
| is currently experiencing.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Clearly the jury placed a higher value on wiping out Jones
| financially than you would have.
| oblio wrote:
| It depends. If the courts went through the regular
| processes and he did nothing but defy them, you could argue
| that on top of the money, he should have been in jail by
| now.
| mightyham wrote:
| It's not that simple though. The initial guilty verdict was
| not even the decision of a jury, but the result of a fairly
| abnormal procedural decision by the judge. There was then a
| follow-on hearing to determine the amount in damages, where
| Jones' lawyer "accidentally" sent loads of evidence, not
| required by discovery, directly to the prosecution. The
| entire suit against Jones is filled with interested parties
| and corruption. It is definitely not a good example of better
| arguments prevailing.
| AI_beffr wrote:
| no, it wasn't a civil case.
|
| https://x.com/AlexJonesMW3/status/1856495252850229386
|
| its so frustrating that the only reason i am able to post
| this is because of X... because searching for this guys name
| or "poject veritas nudge" does not produce the result that it
| obviously should anywhere except for X. this is the tactic
| that is so often used by people like you. state something
| that is factually correct but completely incorrect and
| misleading when the full context is taken into account. even
| if this were an actual civil case brought on in the normal
| way it would still be the undeniable truth that one billion
| is silly and that this is political.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| The ends justify the means, in some circumstances. If you play
| fair against monsters, monsters win.
|
| > but the tools and methods used were entirely inappropriate to
| a liberal democracy, where you prevail with better arguments.
|
| I strongly disagree this is our operating environment, based on
| the evidence.
| antiquark wrote:
| > If you play fair against monsters, monsters win.
|
| If you become a monster to fight the monster, the monster
| always wins!
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| As is part of the journey and story arc!
| Spivak wrote:
| Better arguments prevail only works when participants argue
| in good faith grounded in curiously, evidence and reason. The
| guy who flips the table isn't proposing a novel gaming
| strategy, you just kick him out of board game club.
| duxup wrote:
| >There is no possible way that someone ranting on the internet
| can cause 1.5 billion of emotional damage
|
| I'd like to see someone quantify what a reasonable number would
| be and how they came to it.
|
| I served on a jury where we had to award similar damages.
| "Anyone got any ideas how to account for this?" I asked ....
| nobody had any good ones.
| jacknews wrote:
| You cannot quantify it. IMHO emotional damage is not a thing,
| at least in terms of people merely saying things about you.
| Have you not heard 'sticks and stones...'?
|
| If someone claims false facts about you, and is credible, and
| that then has a material impact on you, then sure, that might
| be something for the law.
|
| Otherwise we'd be prosecuting every gossip.
| Larrikin wrote:
| Your feelings that it is not a thing have no bearing on the
| actual law. I'm sure you and Alex Jones both agree, but
| luckily the victims, the jury, and the law don't.
| randomdata wrote:
| _> You cannot quantify it._
|
| You can, within some reasonable margin, quantify the
| opportunity cost, though, which is what such reparations
| are intended to compensate.
|
| Best I can find was that there were 15 plaintiffs, each
| representing a family. If we assume an average family of
| four, let's say there are 60 beneficiaries, or $25 million
| per person. That's about an order of magnitude more than
| the typical person would expect to make in their lifetime.
|
| There should be something to suggest that they had an
| income trend or other demonstration of similar potential to
| have otherwise earned that much if Infowars/Alex Jones had
| not done what they did. I wonder what showed that?
| fogus wrote:
| This isn't the 18th century anymore where the dissemination of
| arguments barely traveled outside of the immediate vicinity,
| this is the globally networked firehose of disinformation
| blasted right in your face 24-hours a day. Relying on better
| arguments to win hearts and minds in this environment is
| hopelessly naive.
| deadbabe wrote:
| Democracy doesn't work in the social media age. It's time for
| something new.
|
| Edit: downvotes from the short sighted, I hate this echo
| chamber sometimes
| roarcher wrote:
| Such as?
| deadbabe wrote:
| Algorithmic governance
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| So, governance by whoever writes the algorithm? No way.
| deadbabe wrote:
| No one writes it, it's a black box neural network.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| So, governance by whoever picks the training corpus.
| Still no way.
| deadbabe wrote:
| Oh right, better to be led by the whims of voters trained
| on a corpus of social media content which I'm sure has no
| bias.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| Oh yeah that's all we need is whatever tech org having
| even more unearned and unaccountable authority in our
| lives.
|
| I'll fully cosign that liberal democracy has a LOT of
| issues but sweet fuck if we hand over our government to
| more fucking algorithms I'm becoming a terrorist.
| burkaman wrote:
| > where you prevail with better arguments
|
| What is your argument? It sounds like you aren't very familiar
| with the case ("whatever the claim was"), and I don't think
| just declaring that something is ridiculous is a very good
| argument.
| krapp wrote:
| >I mean, good riddance to Alex Jones, but the tools and methods
| used were entirely inappropriate to a liberal democracy, where
| you prevail with better arguments.
|
| The tools and methods used were "a trial by a jury of his
| peers," in which better arguments did prevail. That seems
| entirely appropriate to a liberal democracy.
| benjymo wrote:
| He knowingly rallied his supporters to harass the victims and
| their families. That's a bit more than "someone ranting on the
| internet".
| koolba wrote:
| I'm not aware of him suggesting people harass anybody.
| There's a wide line between saying crazy things and calling
| people to take specific action against specific people.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| he repeatedly asked his audience to "investigate" the
| families and a number of them did so in person.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| My dude. He was ranting for years to an audience of people
| self-selecting as susceptible to propaganda about how a
| specific group of normal ass people was assisting the
| Government in dismantling their second amendment rights.
|
| Like no he didn't literally say "go torment them" but come
| the fuck on. The connection between the events here isn't
| 1/10th as complicated as most of Alex's actual theories,
| it's literally just a line.
| throwup238 wrote:
| They did prevail with better arguments... in front of a judge
| and jury.
| patall wrote:
| The number seems to be based on the fact that he made money of
| it. And if that was in the 100s of million, the fine should
| obviously be higher to ward of other people doing so (and not
| just have it as a cost of doing business). Kind of like the
| german movie piracy thing where the convicts had to give up
| thousands of bitcoin, which the state sold for more than 2
| billion.
|
| (Beside the fact that in other liberal democracies, he would be
| in prison now)
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| There were 2 issues. The first is that he made money off of
| it. The 2nd (and likely bigger issue) was that he repeatedly
| violated court orders (e.g. not complying with discovery,
| repeatedly lying under oath, threatening the jury on his show
| while the trial was going on, etc). Judges and juries
| generally really don't like it when one of the parties is
| lying their ass off and ignoring the judge's orders.
| bediger4000 wrote:
| The USA has an adversarial legal system. Jones and his lawyers
| didn't do anything that they could have done to prevent this.
|
| My understanding is that the suit against Jones was pretty
| standard in what damages it asked for, and that defendants
| (Jones in this case) are giving every opportunity to negotiate
| and legally lessen the damages. Jones' lawyers did not do this,
| apparently at his direction. Jones also refused to produce
| evidence that is always traded between parties in suits like
| this. There was a "Perry Mason" moment when Jones was on the
| stand testifying that revealed (due to an incredible screw up
| by his lawyers) that Jones had apparently withheld info he
| should have disclosed during discovery.
|
| Basically, he directed his lawyers to do nothing, and they did
| so. The size of the judgement is statutory. It's not that there
| was a governmental thumb on the scale, it's that Jones and his
| lawyers didn't do anything to scale it down, or even do much to
| contradict the plaintiff's claims.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _a liberal democracy, where you prevail with better arguments_
|
| This is only true when everyone argues in good faith, and is
| committed to accepting the possibility of being proven wrong.
| Sociopaths and other kinds of assholes exist and can corrupt
| any system if allowed to do so.
| neom wrote:
| Jeff Lawson the founder of Twilio owns The Onion, glad he's
| growing his quality retirement project.
| jnwatson wrote:
| He seems to be doing a better job running a newspaper than
| Bezos.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| I bet they sell fewer fraudulent merchandise than Bezos too
| KerrAvon wrote:
| definitely printing fewer lies in the newspaper than Bezos
| master-hax wrote:
| how did it feel when Saudi Arabia stole your handle?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neom
| krunck wrote:
| https://archive.ph/pxmqX
| delichon wrote:
| The current speculation by the right-o-sphere that Alex Jones is
| about to be appointed the Trump press secretary is apt for the
| moment where Trump seems to have made his nominations on the
| basis of how much they will disturb the left. It's hard to
| imagine anyone that could be more effective at achieving that
| than Jones.
| tyleo wrote:
| I don't think effective government is founded on the basis of
| lolz.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| I've found the testable hypothesis!
| Maken wrote:
| Haven't you seen the DOGE department yet?
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Haven 't you seen the DOGE department yet?_
|
| How do you make government smaller?
|
| Step 1: Make government bigger by inventing a new
| department!
|
| (Strictly speaking, it's not a government department. It is
| a private entity that will operate outside the government,
| and influence the president. What could possibly go wrong?)
| Maken wrote:
| Whatever it is, it for sure has the lolzs as its basis.
| dmix wrote:
| > It is a private entity that will operate outside the
| government, and influence the president. What could
| possibly go wrong?
|
| National Science Board is an external advisory board to
| the US gov. There's tons of examples of this sort of
| thing, especially in education and science.
| sofixa wrote:
| Pretty sure the National Science Board isn't co-chaired
| by a CEO and part owner multibillionaire with direct
| personal interests around government funded science
| projects though.
| dmix wrote:
| Not defending Doge just saying it's not new. Defence
| Business Board is a similar analogy. Plenty of people
| working at companies with gov contracts on the board
| during its history
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Business_Board
|
| https://dbb.defense.gov/Board-Members/
| burkaman wrote:
| The National Science Board was established by Congress,
| its activities are defined and governed by the law that
| created it, and it is clearly a part of the executive
| branch. Why do you consider it to be external to the
| government?
| dmix wrote:
| I'm guessing Doge would be regulated under this act https
| ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Advisory_Committee_Act..
| .
| avgDev wrote:
| Nothing screams efficiency like 2 dept heads.
| talldayo wrote:
| And let's be perfectly clear - given two weeks in office
| they _will_ be screaming at us.
| notahacker wrote:
| In fairness, the possibility the two heads' respective
| egos will cancel each other out is the most efficient
| thing about it...
| kouru225 wrote:
| Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy... They have two people
| running the Department of Government Efficiency
| triceratops wrote:
| > DOGE department
|
| https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DepartmentOfRed
| u...
| anon291 wrote:
| Well it also wasn't founded on whatever the hell we were
| doing before either
| concerndc1tizen wrote:
| It's effective at disorientation and disbelief.
| ben_w wrote:
| > It's hard to imagine anyone that could be more effective at
| achieving that than Jones.
|
| Asking as a non-American: how disturbing would it be if he
| appointed Putin?
| hiddencost wrote:
| If you wanted your comment to hit a bit better, you might
| have considered, e.g., Lavrov.
| ben_w wrote:
| I didn't know who that was until googling before replying,
| are you sure that's going to hit better with an American
| audience?
|
| Either on Hacker News or as an "own the libs" choice for
| Trump?
| ImHereToVote wrote:
| He is owned by another foreign government.
| soco wrote:
| If by "the left" you mean pretty much anyone non-kkk then yes
| he's an excellent nomination and while we're at it, let's skip
| those useless political details as "what is left" anyway (yes,
| sarcasm).
| delichon wrote:
| Both left and right are assemblages of compromises flying in
| loose formation.
| anon291 wrote:
| Vivek ramaswamy and Tulsi Gabbard and usha Vance and Marco
| Rubio.... Kkk has become very diverse lately /s.
|
| Okay, but really... If you're going to criticize, can we at
| least make valid analogies?
| sincerecook wrote:
| The KKK hasn't been relevant since Jerry Springer dredged
| them up for his show in the 90s, you may need to update your
| roster of Boogeymen.
| jiayo wrote:
| The KKK hasn't been relevant since America collectively
| decided it was safe for proponents of ethnic cleansing to
| walk around and exist in polite society without having to
| hide their identities.
| sincerecook wrote:
| It's more like polite society has become less relevant.
| The pussy footing around and talking out of both sides of
| your mouth just doesn't work anymore.
| oblio wrote:
| > The pussy footing around and talking out of both sides
| of your mouth just doesn't work anymore.
|
| It took me a while to parse this, are you saying that
| lying doesn't work anymore???
| nailer wrote:
| But that hasn't happened.
| consteval wrote:
| ... except it has, on many occasions. Seeing neo-nazis at
| conservative rallies is a much more common event than it
| was 20 years ago.
|
| And before anyone says, "well you call everyone neo-
| nazis!" Erm, self-proclaimed neo-nazis. They call
| themselves that.
| nailer wrote:
| When?
| consteval wrote:
| I don't think this is in good faith because you know what
| I'm talking about, but here's a rather famous example:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unite_the_Right_rally
|
| Or, if you prefer something more contemporary, here's two
| days ago:
|
| https://www.reuters.com/world/us/masked-protesters-with-
| nazi...
|
| And please, I don't want to hear any arguments along the
| lines of them being "not real conservatives" or "not real
| republicans". Both of us know who these people voted for,
| so just leave it at that.
|
| Not that I'm saying conservatives are nazis. I'm not. But
| I am acknowledging the reality that neo-nazism is real,
| does exist, and has a foothold exclusively in the
| American right.
| sincerecook wrote:
| Are you sure that referring to an event from 8 years ago
| as an example of a much more common phenomenon is in good
| faith? Your second example doesn't specify exactly how
| large the gathering was, but from the context of the
| article it sounds like it was maybe a dozen people. What
| threshold are you using for "much more common"?
| consteval wrote:
| Yes, because I stated "in the past 20 years"
|
| I chose that example because it's incredibly famous, so
| you should already know it.
|
| > What threshold are you using for "much more common"?
|
| My eyeballs. Look I'm sure there's hard data for this
| somewhere, but I'm not going to look for it.
|
| Here, PBS has a video on it:
| https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/far-right-violence-a-
| growi...
|
| I haven't watched it, so maybe it's good, maybe it's not.
|
| From everything I've seen, this type of stuff is much,
| much more common now than it used to be. I think we all
| know that, you included. I'm getting skeptical that you,
| and the other commenter, are doing this in good faith.
|
| From my perspective, and the perspective of everyone I
| know, this is obvious. If you're not seeing it that's
| very strange to me.
| nailer wrote:
| > Yes, because I stated "in the past 20 years"
|
| No. You wrote:
|
| "Seeing neo-nazis at conservative rallies is a much more
| common event than it was 20 years ago."
|
| Do you have evidence of nazis at conservative rallies?
| consteval wrote:
| 1. I already provided evidence
|
| 2. You don't actually care because you're playing stupid.
| I know you know what I'm talking about, but by your own
| self-prescribed idiocrasy you will act as if it's your
| first day on Earth.
|
| I have no more patience for people who are wrong, know
| they're wrong, but continue to be wrong for the fun of
| it. It's not fun, it's sad and pathetic. I'm not your
| therapist here to force you back into reality.
|
| The fact of the matter is there are modern neo-nazis and
| they largely gather at alt-right or conservative events.
| I'm not making any judgement past that, so do whatever
| the fuck you want with that information, I don't care.
| nailer wrote:
| > I already provided evidence
|
| No. You told everyone to "look it up". I have seen to
| evidence that nazis are more popular now than 20 years
| ago and that's obviously quite a substantial claim.
|
| > I have no more patience for people who are wrong, know
| they're wrong, but continue to be wrong for the fun of
| it.
|
| Yes.
| olddustytrail wrote:
| Are you denying you have been at any conservative
| rallies?
| sincerecook wrote:
| Doesn't it tell you something that the most famous
| example of your case is from 8 years ago? If it was so
| much more common you'd think there would be many other
| easily referred to examples. I haven't seen the PBS video
| but the headline is "far-right violence", and there was
| plenty of that in the media in the 90s too. The boogeyman
| back then were "far-right" militias rather than the more
| fashionable Nazis you hear about these days.
|
| All this is beside the point, because this violence was
| not condoned by Republican party officials. You could
| make a case for Jan 6th though, and then I'd point to the
| riots of 2020 on the other side. Both sides have their
| extremists.
| consteval wrote:
| > Doesn't it tell you something that the most famous
| example of your case is from 8 years ago? If it was so
| much more common you'd think there would be many other
| easily referred to examples
|
| There are, feel free to look them up. I'm not here to
| convince people who willingly play stupid. You know what
| I'm talking about, and I know you know what I'm talking
| about, so we're on the same page.
|
| > The boogeyman back then were "far-right" militias
| rather than the more fashionable Nazis you hear about
| these days.
|
| It's not a boogie man when people wave Swastikas. They
| just are. I don't give a fuck what you do with that
| information, I'm just telling you it's happening.
|
| > Both sides have their extremists.
|
| Why is it that any time somebody tried to remind people
| of obvious realities conservatives get so incredibly
| defensive and weird?
|
| I never said anything about the left. I don't know why
| you're talking about them, and I also don't care. Fix the
| neo-nazi problem or don't, and if you wish to stop being
| told about it then get rid of them. I'm not the one
| planting neo-nazis at conservative rallies. The left
| isn't planting neo-nazis at conservative rallies. You're
| blaming the wrong people.
|
| If the simple and factual reality of the situation upsets
| you then I can't help you. In fact, nobody can. So remove
| yourself from the conversation, as evidently there is no
| solution. So why waste all of our time?
| sincerecook wrote:
| I don't think you're being very charitable. I'm not
| playing dumb, I just don't think you've made your case,
| and "trust me, it's happening" is not much of an
| argument.
| nashashmi wrote:
| I hope that they can keep the spirit of the infowars conspiracy
| genre alive.
|
| > "US seeks to destabilize Canada into a war with Mexico to solve
| the border crisis "
| mmooss wrote:
| I'll take the bait: Is that from Infowars or from The Onion?
| nashashmi wrote:
| Gotta be the onion. Infowars publishes higher quality
| conspiracy theories that is fit to print.
| LegitShady wrote:
| potentially hilarious. can't wait to see what they launch.
| duxup wrote:
| Inside a lot of humor is some deep seated truth.
|
| It's encouraging that an org based on humor / even a little truth
| here ultimately buys and will discard an empire of hateful lies.
| gchamonlive wrote:
| The onion should just keep Alex Jones without any filters but put
| the onion logo on every page. The joke is already good enough,
| just keep it going.
| craftkiller wrote:
| The Onion already did that joke: https://theonion.com/sale-of-
| bet-to-white-supremacist-group-...
| carabiner wrote:
| Sources: Hackers Vandalized Drudge Report For Last 15 Years
|
| https://theonion.com/sources-hackers-vandalized-drudge-repor...
| russdpale wrote:
| Not a good idea, Alex Jones is a big reason for the hate
| against people like Anthony Fauci.
| hotep99 wrote:
| Anthony Fauci is a big reason for the hate against people
| like Anthony Fauci.
| gchamonlive wrote:
| > His advice was frequently contradicted by Trump, and
| Trump's supporters alleged that Fauci was trying to
| politically undermine Trump's run for reelection
|
| - Wikipedia
|
| Seems like a nice fellow
| duxup wrote:
| Inside a lot of humor is some deep seated truth.
|
| It's encouraging that an org based on humor / even a little truth
| here ultimately buys and will discard an empire of hateful lies.
| muffwiggler wrote:
| They should buy the NYT instead, given it has been a joke in
| itself for the past ~10 years.
| kregasaurusrex wrote:
| 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!
|
| [0] https://www.infowarsstore.com/24-karat-999-pure-gold-
| collect...
|
| [1] https://www.infowarsstore.com/infowars-media/books/the-
| great...
| dmvdoug wrote:
| > _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.*_
| ziddoap wrote:
| Funny, for sure, but does not explain what they will be doing
| in reality.
| SauciestGNU wrote:
| They probably don't want to be in the business of selling
| unregulated, scammy, and potentially dangerous goods. They
| might destroy the merch. Who knows.
| rsynnott wrote:
| I'd assume destroy, maybe keep a bit for novelty value.
| Like, they're not going to resell it, you'd assume.
| dmvdoug wrote:
| There were a bunch of suggestions on the bluesky thread
| that they should donate samples of them to researchers so
| that they could figure out what was actually in the
| fucking things.
| talldayo wrote:
| That, or you didn't take them seriously enough. Bring me
| the candy bar!
| m463 wrote:
| > _On top of its journalistic pursuits, The Onion also owns
| and operates the majority of the world's transoceanic
| shipping lanes, stands on the nation's leading edge on
| matters of deforestation and strip mining, and proudly
| conducts tests on millions of animals daily._
|
| https://theonion.com/about-us/
| ziddoap wrote:
| Ah, that explains it. They can test them on animals.
| Thanks!
| ixtli wrote:
| Phenomenal point!
| gadders wrote:
| >> make a one-time-run charity auction collectible for the
| Sandy Hook families
|
| They've got $1.5billion. Probably don't need the gold as well.
| There might be equally valid causes with less funds.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _They 've got $1.5billion._
|
| No, they've got a judgement on paper for $1.5 billion. This
| is part of the process of actually getting that money.
| kregasaurusrex wrote:
| 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???
| paddy_m wrote:
| They have a claim for $1.5B, they are going after all Alex
| Jones assets which are much less than $1.5B.
| tightbookkeeper wrote:
| Don't forget their many other successful lawsuits:
|
| - school administration
|
| - rifle manufacturer
|
| - the shooters mother (home insurance)
|
| - other journalists who wrote about the event
|
| I don't know exactly what compensation they should get, but
| this does not seem like a healthy or sustainable way for
| our society to deal with tragedy.
| sofixa wrote:
| > I don't know exactly what compensation they should get,
| but this does not seem like a healthy or sustainable way
| for our society to deal with tragedy.
|
| I don't know if it's healthy or sustainable, but it
| definitely sounds healthier than ignoring the tragedy
| altogether.
| oddevan wrote:
| Agreed. It doesn't seem like a long-term solution, but it
| is the best way we have _right now_ to visit consequences
| on people/orgs that enabled the tragedy. If our society
| sees everything in cost/benefit, then increasing the
| costs of actions that lead to tragedies like this is one
| of the best things we can do.
| tightbookkeeper wrote:
| > people/orgs that enabled the tragedy
|
| They didn't though. Holding a rifle manufacturer liable
| for a shooting makes no sense, unless applied
| universally.
|
| A journalist writing a book did not cause the shooting.
|
| This is greed and lashing out in pain. I'm sure members
| of the community have ruined their life in pursuit of
| these things.
| consteval wrote:
| They did, if even indirectly. Just like how McDonald's
| holds some responsibility for the obesity epidemic.
|
| The company that makes rifles makes them to be sold. It
| is in the company's best interest that as many mass
| shootings happen as possible. By providing guns, they DID
| contribute to the tragedy. We can tell, because if they
| had never produced that gun then it would've never shot
| anyone.
|
| This doesn't even touch on the fact that the reason gun
| laws are so lax is because these companies lobby for it
| to be so. Again, they are incentivized to cause as many
| people to die as possible. Incentives matter. If mass
| shootings were the next blue jeans, these companies would
| quickly overthrow Apple.
|
| Blame is very hard and tricky, but any institution or
| system in place is responsible for an intuitional
| failure. And that's what mass shootings are - an
| institutional failure.
| tightbookkeeper wrote:
| No. I actually don't think lashing out at any wallet that
| happens to be in the area will make anyone happy.
|
| The people who are responsible are dead.
| DirkH wrote:
| Depends on the wallets being lashed at
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| To be specific, the suit against the mother was against
| the mother's estate, since the mother was murdered by the
| shooter... like right away. The suit was settled by the
| estate.
|
| The suit against the school administration was eventually
| dismissed (the families lost on appeal)
| (https://www.newstimes.com/news/article/Two-Sandy-Hook-
| famili...). I agree it seemed kinda dubious, and I think
| the right outcome happened here.
|
| The suit against Remington ended in a settlement,
| probably because Remington didn't want a chance in hell
| to set any legal precedent. The fact that the families
| got settlements is really a symptom of how unsettled the
| issue of gun control is in America. Like it's completely
| inane that it's fully legal to manufacture and sell AR-15
| rifles to basically anyone, BUT that somehow marketing
| them to civilians is inappropriate. Remington settled
| because they just don't want any possibility of the
| status quo moving against them.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| I guarantee you these do not add up to a billion dollars.
| tightbookkeeper wrote:
| Wikipedia page disagrees with you. Whether they collected
| that amount, I do not know.
| consteval wrote:
| > but this does not seem like a healthy or sustainable
| way for our society to deal with tragedy
|
| I don't know, this, to me, is the proper set of
| incentives. Nobody wants to lose money, so you better do
| everything you can to prevent these tragedies. If we just
| sob a little and move on, the systems in place will not
| change.
| multjoy wrote:
| A healthy & sustainable way would probably be to do
| something about school shootings in the only country
| where they happen on a regular basis.
|
| In the absence of that, what else would you propose?
| nixdev wrote:
| > supplements of a dubious nature
|
| 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.
| blackguardx wrote:
| Can you give an example of these high-quality supplements?
| Otherwise folks just have to take you at your word that they
| exist.
| kregasaurusrex wrote:
| 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.
|
| [0] https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/prop65/notices/2017-02319
| .pd...
|
| [1] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/charliewarzel/we-
| sent-a...
| wyldfire wrote:
| > 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 a monument / memorial to the deceased, in the hopes that the
| truth would outlive Jones's lies.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| And the flat earthers.
| rtkwe wrote:
| InfoWars only shilled for gold sellers. Their business was
| entirely Vitamins/Supplement, Merch, and crazy AFAIK they never
| sold gold directly.
| TZubiri wrote:
| 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.
| augusto-moura wrote:
| And pocket the money from the gold bars? Probably better to
| donate them anyway, better yet to give it back to victims
| involved in his lies
| ur-whale wrote:
| Fitting!
| bogtog wrote:
| Really curious what the bidding was like or who else made an
| offer, since it seems that the Sandy Hook Victims (who own all of
| the debt?) wanted the sale to The Onion specifically
| TomK32 wrote:
| I'd be surprised if there weren't any safeguards to prevent
| Infowars from posting hate ever again.
| NortySpock wrote:
| A buyer is not always required to select the bid of the highest
| monetary value; sounds like the Onion had a proposal that was
| "a reasonable sum of money, and also we help lead a healthy way
| to find a path to redemption for this website and make it a
| kinder place than before"
| apozem wrote:
| Part of the sale is that Onion InfoWars will run pro-gun safety
| ads from Everytown USA. That and the obvious goal of
| humiliating Jones is probably why the Sandy Hook parents sold
| it to the Onion.
|
| Can't say I'm not happy. Jones is an evil man who has richly
| earned this indignity and worse. His campaign of harassment
| against people whose _children were murdered_ was so bad, some
| parents brought private security guards to testify at his trial
| [0]. They described death threats, strangers confronting them
| in their homes and shooting at their cars.
|
| [0]: https://apnews.com/article/shootings-texas-school-
| connecticu...
| petercooper wrote:
| I'm watching his stream just to see how the drama goes down and a
| silly tech-adjacent bit popped up when he started ranting about
| Linux and how if "they" were trying to take Linus Torvalds down,
| they still couldn't ever own Linux!
| Evidlo wrote:
| Is there a recording of this?
| petercooper wrote:
| No, but I imagine it'll pop up somewhere given everyone who
| records and shares his stuff. I was going to clip it at the
| time but my screen capture software decided to spontaneously
| update and demand money for the upgrade.
| philistine wrote:
| And I believe he is wrong in this case. Linus is absolutely a
| lynchpin for Linux control. He can be replaced, but whoever
| replaces him then becomes that lynchpin. He's the benevolent
| dictator for life after all.
| samatman wrote:
| You're assuming that would be one person and one
| organization, the way it is now.
|
| I think that's the most likely outcome, but it isn't a safe
| bet by any means.
|
| In any case I hope it's a good long time before we have to
| find out, since I wish Linus long life and good health.
| int0x29 wrote:
| Linus Torvalds political opinions, to the extent I've seen him
| express them, are hardly in line with Alex Jones. So this feels
| odd.
| petercooper wrote:
| [delayed]
| skibz wrote:
| Justice, both poetic and civil. Bravo to The Onion.
| mannycalavera42 wrote:
| today an onion made me cry a bit
| zenethian wrote:
| What's wild is that if I go to the Infowars website I can't
| actually tell if The Onion is controlling it yet or not. It all
| looks like satire already, full of absolutely ridiculous
| headlines.
| avgDev wrote:
| Imagine there are humans who read those headlines and think to
| themselves that it is real.
| int_19h wrote:
| Worse yet, imagine that those humans are armed, and many of
| them routinely fantasize about what they do when "it's time".
| My local gun store has sported an InfoWars sticker for many
| years now.
| olddustytrail wrote:
| > My local gun store
|
| Not a thing for most places
| titusjohnson wrote:
| Can't say that about the USA.
| fundingshovel wrote:
| Anybody else have to triple check it wasn't just The Onion
| trolling?
| burnt-resistor wrote:
| I refuse to believe in any conspiracies except that The Onion
| took over The Matrix and is running a Truman Show program full of
| unreal absurdities to see if I'll go insane.
| gigatexal wrote:
| Oh now this is some good news in the post truth world of Trump
| 2.0
| hipadev23 wrote:
| Is Alex Jones the new Press Secretary yet?
| leptons wrote:
| The next 4 years are going to be an absolute farce in the US.
| vixen99 wrote:
| Looking from abroad some folk have the impression that the
| previous four years were. They were a triumph?
| leptons wrote:
| The US has recovered from inflation better than practically
| any other country. Yes, the last 4 years have been far, far
| better than trump's first term by any measure you care to
| mention, except maybe hate, lies and fear.
| marcusverus wrote:
| Biden wins on inflation, real wage growth, illegal
| immigration, and international military conflict?
| drawkward wrote:
| Maybe?
| leptons wrote:
| Not sure how you could think "maybe". His early
| appointments are already extremely dubious. A fox news host
| as secretary of defense? Come on. Tusli Gabbard, a known
| Russian asset as director of national intelligence? Come
| on. Matt Gaetz the biggest troll in congress (and in legal
| trouble himself) as Atourney General? Come on. Marco Rubio
| as head of Dept of State? Come on. This is already a
| complete farce and it's only been a few days. Anyone saying
| otherwise needs to provide specifics as to why these
| appointments are good for the country.
| drawkward wrote:
| Have any of them been confirmed yet? No.
|
| You can't even bring yourself to mention that the Defense
| nominee has actually served in the Army, and is a
| decorated veteran.
|
| Stop acting like such a partisan; it is far too early to
| commence the bed-wetting.
| hipadev23 wrote:
| > You can't even bring yourself to mention that the
| Defense nominee has actually served in the Army, and is a
| decorated veteran
|
| The amount of copium with his pick is incredible. Hegseth
| is woefully underqualified to be the SecDef. He was in
| Army Natl Guard, not Army. He spent a year at Guantanamo
| in 2004, deployed to Iraq in 2005-2006 and Afghanistan in
| 2011-2012. That's it. The rest of the time was ARR and
| IRR. He has never held any public office at any level.
|
| I'm not trying to dismiss his military service itself,
| it's fine, but to imply it remotely qualifies him to be
| the SecDef is beyond reason. He's a junior officer fit to
| lead a company (100-200 soliders) at best.
| drawkward wrote:
| I don't think the guy is a good pick, but I think he is a
| far less bad pick than the person I responded to was
| portraying.
|
| Unhinged, frightened, partisan subjectivity is only going
| to tire and weaken our side, cause unforced errors.
|
| Hence, my original "Maybe?"
|
| I'm going to save my mental resources for when there is
| an _actual_ problem.
| leptons wrote:
| >Unhinged, frightened, partisan subjectivity
|
| It isn't unhinged, or partisan to be extremely wary of
| everything someone who tried to overthrow the government
| by insurrection does with their newfound power. Yes, I am
| frightened by _what he has already said, and done_. If
| you aren 't then I have to wonder why. He really wore out
| the "give him a chance" excuse many people made for him
| in 2016. There really is no "maybe" about it.
| drawkward wrote:
| 1. Trump got the US out of the TPP, which to this
| economic populist, was amazing. If you think that NAFTA
| led to the blue collar backlash against the Democratic
| party that got us to this electoral result, TPP sez,
| "hold my beer!"
|
| 2. Trump bungled the fuck out of his first go round. I
| expect lots more of the same.
|
| 3. There are two other branches of government; we will
| see how they act. Maybe the Senate Democrats will RtFM
| section about the "Filibuster" button, especially with
| Manchin and Sinema gone?
|
| 4. Lots of left/center left/progressive media
| hyperventilation about the potential bad stuff, but only
| today, after the election did I hear that RFK Jr. thinks
| that DTC advertising of prescription drugs should be
| banned, and that SNAP (fka "food stamps") should not be
| allowed to be spent on (for example) soda. We already
| regulate what WIC can be used for; why not SNAP? Are
| there other policies we are not hearing because they
| don't play as well for clicks? Idk? Yes, I think the guy
| is misguided on vaccines, horribly so, but post-COVID, we
| are already in an environment where it is easy to opt out
| of vaxxing your kid or yourself if you so choose. I dont
| think RFKJr represents a big change here.
|
| 5. Lots of terrible things we were promised during T45
| just didn't happen. The worst, Roe v. Wade, was horrible,
| yet here in my very red state, we passed an amendment
| such that, we now have more abortion rights than when RvW
| was a settled precedent.
|
| So, yes, _at this point_ , Maybe.
|
| But then again, I am not a bed wetter. -\\_(tsu)_/-
| leptons wrote:
| No, you didn't wet the bed, _you shit the bed_ if you
| think a second trump term will be anything but a
| disaster. Soda? That 's the issue you're upset about?
| Really?
|
| I was really wanting the 50k small business plan Harris
| presented, but instead I'll get trump's tariffs which
| will kill any hope of getting my small business off the
| ground.
|
| >Lots of terrible things we were promised during T45 just
| didn't happen.
|
| Lots of worse things happened, and yes, people did expect
| him to try to not leave office and sure enough, the
| insurrection happened at his behest. _A million US
| citizens died while he was sending covid equipment to
| Putin_. He stole and likely sold national secrets. The
| list goes on, and on, and on, about all the heinous stuff
| he did - but you 're worrying about someone buying
| soda???? JFC. SMH.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| So I am qualified to be SecDef, because I am a veteran?
| That is ridiculous. Of all the reasonable qualifications,
| that ranks just about dead last.
| hipadev23 wrote:
| You don't think a fox news host is a great SecDef? Or a non-
| practicing briefly disbarred AG?
| notahacker wrote:
| Tbf successfully avoiding prosecution for white collar
| crime _is_ a credential in understanding the law, sorta...
| mminer237 wrote:
| Child sex trafficking and statutory rape are not what I
| consider white collar crime.
| squarefoot wrote:
| Wondering if that's what Mike Judge is waiting for: free
| inspiration enough for a 12 season long "Idiocracy: the
| series".
| andy_ppp wrote:
| They can just run the original content with a The Onion logo and
| every will find it hilarious.
| dtquad wrote:
| A significant percentage of the population will always gravitate
| towards the type of content produced by Alex Jones and Infowars.
|
| Russia solved this by making "controlled" media outlets (and in
| recent years Telegram channels) for people who gravitate toward
| conspiracies and contrarian viewpoints without making them
| critical of the current Russian administration.
|
| Obviously that is not what The Onion is planning to do but that
| is what this story reminded me of.
| ImHereToVote wrote:
| The US already does this. The problem is that most Americans
| can't understand that their favourite Red/Blue scandal is just
| a side show at the circus of genocide.
| astura wrote:
| This is actually really good news.
|
| The money they paid is going directly to Sandy Hook families
|
| Nobody can use Infowars for evil.
|
| Alex Jones looks like a fool.
| jl6 wrote:
| I worry that this might make The Onion a less credible news
| source.
| moogly wrote:
| Strange. I like The Onion as much as the next guy, but you can't
| make Infowars more of a "parody of itself" than it already is.
| Just shut it down?
| jdadj wrote:
| I wonder if Cards Against Humanity bid against them.
| from-nibly wrote:
| > "By divesting Jones of Infowars' assets, the families and the
| team at The Onion have done a public service and will
| meaningfully hinder Jones's ability to do more harm,"
|
| How hard is it really to start a new podcast?
| tantalor wrote:
| IANAL but isn't it going to be very hard for Jones to
| meaningfully profit from a podcast, or anything really?
| narrator wrote:
| Jones isn't in it for the money.
| drawkward wrote:
| Narrator: Jones was in it for the money.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| He likely still owes them significant money, so they can keep
| pursuing him for that for a while. But even without his
| financial troubles, trying to rebuild his brand is just going
| to lead to endless self-debasement. James O'Keefe is still at
| it since Project Veritas shut down, but has little reach any
| more.
| wg0 wrote:
| That's the best practical joke I have ever heard!
| zdw wrote:
| What really should have happened in this case, like the the
| Parkland killer, was for the people who sued to also take his
| Name and Likeness.
|
| https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/families-settle-court-b...
|
| This would hopefully avoid letting him just rebuild another slime
| empire.
| grahamj wrote:
| Everything about this is pure win
| nxobject wrote:
| It looks like Everytown for Gun Safety is now getting ads on The
| Onion, too - of course The Onion is still out of money, but what
| the hell at least there's a serious part to this.
| zenogantner wrote:
| Next step: The Onion buys X.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| 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.
| SimbaOnSteroids wrote:
| 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.
| russdpale wrote:
| This has been my thought all along. Drown out his real stuff
| with AI generated slop. Slop him.
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| 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.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2024/11/14/nx-s1-5189399/alex-jones-auct...
| oddevan wrote:
| 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.
| qingcharles wrote:
| LOL, it's already being updated...
|
| "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
| barbazoo wrote:
| > 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.
| superfrank wrote:
| Jones owes them $1.5 billion. They're never going to see
| most of that judgement. They're likely giving up money they
| were never going to receive anyway.
|
| My hunch is that the judge and everyone involved knows that
| they aren't going to get anything substantial from Jones,
| which is why they allowed them to use money they are owed
| from the judgement as part of the bid. It allows them to
| get something of value out of the ruling (or at least take
| something of value from Jones).
| mikeryan wrote:
| The "Global Tetrahedron" site already has an Infowars Web 1.0
| slant, the Everytown for Gun Safety ads are great.
|
| https://global-tetrahedron.com/
| iancmceachern wrote:
| Prediction:
|
| Over the next decades the onion will slowly become not a, but the
| only, source of real news as all the other sources become more
| like info wars.
| The_Blade wrote:
| "And now with the State of the Onion address, President Swift!"
| oblio wrote:
| She'd probably be a better president than Trump, I imagine
| she's already a better businessperson than he is.
| standardUser wrote:
| Worth remembering that Donald Trump embraced Alex Jones _after_
| his sustained campaign of vicious, hateful and provably-false
| lies about dead child.
|
| So did Joe Rogan.
| xanderlewis wrote:
| I actually kind of liked Joe Rogan (from the little I saw of
| him interviewing scientists and other 'intellectuals'), but the
| more I think about it and learn the more I realise he's just a
| moron.
| standardUser wrote:
| He's a very likeable personality. But he offers the same
| platform and uses the same kids gloves on all of his guests,
| regardless of if they are world class professionals at the
| top of their field or the most deranged sicko fucks peddling
| insane conspiracy theories.
| xanderlewis wrote:
| Yeah -- exactly. I've never seen anything that makes me
| doubt he's a good person. But he seems utterly unable to
| distinguish between bullshit artists and genuine experts.
| parkerhiggins wrote:
| The Onion did a fundraising campaign a few months ago. Glad to
| see this is where my donation went!
| Lammy wrote:
| I wish I lived in the reality where the _Waking Life_ (2001)
| version of Alex Jones was the one we got:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5HLn3eYLSo
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _striv[ing] to make life both scarier and longer_
|
| There are "weather", "climate" and "Climate"... And that above is
| "Climate". A concise definition of the Times.
|
| Bless the Onion!
| Validark wrote:
| What does this mean?
| programmertote wrote:
| "Infinite Growth Forever," - that onion-y sign off made me laugh.
| jakjak123 wrote:
| Actually started laughing seeing that
| pessimizer wrote:
| The Onion used to be a great free comedy tabloid with good
| serious media reviews, then became a big national brand that
| still maintained the humor to some extent, eventually sold off
| the review section which was successful for a while until
| purchased again and shut down, while the Onion was sold to
| Gizmodo, which was then bought by Univision (G/O Media), then
| sold to the private equity firm Great Hill Partners, then sold to
| (or spun off as) Global Tetrahedron, run by the worst, most
| establishment journalist on the planet, Ben Collins, since April
| 2024.
|
| Middle class people just love being validated by their dumb
| brands. They're slapping themselves on the back like they won
| something. This masthead has no relationship to that cool paper
| from the 90s.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| Interesting piece on The New Republic:
| https://newrepublic.com/post/188430/alex-jones-meltdown-reac...
| MilnerRoute wrote:
| I thought this was a prank, but "The satirical news company plans
| to shutter Jones' Infowars and rebuild the website featuring
| well-known internet humor writers and content creators."
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/onion-wins-alex-jones-i...
|
| See also: "Why I Decided To Buy 'InfoWars'"
|
| _" Make no mistake: This is a coup for our company and a well-
| deserved victory for multinational elites the world over... 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."_
|
| https://theonion.com/heres-why-i-decided-to-buy-infowars/
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Holy cod, Infowars' afterlife as a (presumed) parody of itself is
| going to be bigger than its regular existence ever was.
| lynndotpy wrote:
| At the time the news of the Sandy Hook shooting broke, I was a
| highschooler in a vo-tech school in Connecticut.
|
| Friday in late December are usually unserious days in K-12!
| People had their sights set on winter break and work was thin.
| But I remember that day had a lot of commotion, a lot of
| seriousness, and then a lot of silence.
|
| Being a vo-tech school, we had students from all over the state.
| Some kids left or were taken out early, some of them having had
| ties to the families in Newtown. Throughout the day, our school
| got emptier and emptier.
|
| A lot of students didn't return to the building for the whole
| week or so until winter break started. Even though the
| seriousness weaned over the days, there was an unbreakable
| eeriness that just comes with the building being so sparsely
| populated. Our highschool was a small one (about 400 students
| total) which exacerbated it.
|
| I lived with my parents at the time and I saw my mom gradually
| become a Sandy Hook "truther" as she fell deep down Facebook
| rabbitholes. It was bad. Although she eventually came around,
| that created distance between us that never recovered.
|
| There's a lot of bad and mind-boggling news abound, but this is a
| very personally satisfying headline.
| TZubiri wrote:
| The dankest timeline
| lasc4r wrote:
| They should name it X
| amai wrote:
| XWars!
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| In one sense this is funny, in another it's justice, but I think
| from a broader perspective this is just more of the same tit-for-
| tat nonsense that moves the needle in the wrong direction.
|
| My hypothesis is that the U.S. didn't become more divided because
| of moron sites like I.W. but rather because of our collective
| reaction to them. These groups are far easier to ignore when we
| stop trying to silence them.
| nomendos wrote:
| Nice summary and agree in the way you put it, which I am
| stating to all sides - so nobody likes to hear it :-) since
| majority is literally polarized (i.e. their objectiveness,
| capacity to think deep, sort/prioritize is disrupted by impact
| to emotions/biases)
| jfengel wrote:
| I don't think the causation runs either direction. At most, I'd
| say that a site like InfoWars reflects the division, rather
| than either causing it or being caused by it.
|
| Divisiveness in the US goes much deeper than that, and long
| predates both the Internet and that kind of radio program. You
| could perhaps pick the early 70s as a starting point, with the
| US deeply divided by Vietnam and Civil Rights, at exactly the
| same time as real government conspiracies (Watergate,
| COINTELPRO, MKUltra) came to light.
|
| I'd actually trace it back further than that, through
| McCarthyism, the Civil War, and back before the Revolution. But
| there's a fairly direct course between the divisiveness of the
| 1960s and where we end up today.
|
| I really don't think it would have helped anything to ignore
| Alex Jones.
| rconti wrote:
| I had a friend who often said "sunlight is the best
| disinfectant". Of course, he was saying that in about 2010 and
| I'm pretty sure it's aged extremely poorly, because the
| increasing publicity around conspiracy theories has only made
| them more popular. It feels like a stretch to say "but people
| were trying to silence the conspiracy theories, that's why they
| caught on!"
| ReptileMan wrote:
| >because the increasing publicity around conspiracy theories
| has only made them more popular.
|
| Or because after Iraq war and Covid the default is to be
| skeptical of everything government.
| tecoholic wrote:
| I get the broader point of eye-for-an-eye.. but in this case
| how are people supposed to ignore when the harm done is very
| real and very cruel? These groups don't want to operate in
| their own little corner of the world. They will up the ante
| until they gain notoriety and the attention they want, which
| enables them to make the money they want. The collective
| reaction is all but guaranteed, I would argue and it's not
| because people want to silence morons, but to limit harm.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| When The Onion itself goes bankrupt in the not too distant
| future, can Alex Jones buy the Onion and get the domain back?
| iambateman wrote:
| Buying trash in order to put it in the dumpster forever is
| honorable.
|
| But trash belongs in the dumpster, and nowhere else.
| fsckboy wrote:
| if you want Alex Jones on Joe Rogan, you can see the friendship
| and respect Rogan holds for Jones, because they "came up
| together" in the comedian community. Jones is one of those
| screwball comedians who is all in, totally committed to the joke,
| like Andy Kaufman but a little more screwball.
|
| The Onion's humor model is a mean sort of "if you don't get the
| joke, it's you we're making fun of you". It's ironic that they
| don't get that "if you don't get Alex Jones, you are the joke"
| but it's not mean, we're just laughing
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Are you suggesting that everything Alex Jones says is supposed
| to be _funny_? And we all just don 't get the joke?
| fsckboy wrote:
| Joe Rogan, live, has Jamie research outlandish claims Alex
| Jones makes, and it turns out there are citations providing
| the basis for his claims. If you don't get a kick out of
| that, yes, you don't get it.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| There are citations for the Sandy Hook crisis actor
| accusations?
| fsckboy wrote:
| do you like sports? (ok if you don't) many people who
| like sports do not enjoy the amount of time that the
| olympics coverage spends on "the backstory" of the
| athletes' lives, they just want to watch the competition,
| because that's the rare thing, the opportunity that's
| being squandered. Backstories? everybody has a backstory,
| the bagboy at my supermarket has a back story.
|
| do I think the 2nd amendment is interesting from a
| historical perspective? do I think it's interesting from
| a citizen's rights perspective? do I think it's a slam
| dunk in either direction, thumbs up thumbs down? Do I
| think it's worth discussing? Regardless of the answers to
| that, am I interested in the backstories of the Sandy
| Hook families? no, I'm not. Everybody feels bad when a
| family member dies, that's a good thing (the feeling bad,
| not the death), ok, but it's not unique, it's doesn't
| crystalize any issues.
|
| Do we put the families of victims on juries because
| they're so clear-headed about the crimes? No we don't, we
| actually exclude them from juries. Many people in my
| family that I was close to have died, some quite
| tragically. Do I care if you care? no, I don't, I really
| don't.
|
| So, if you are a person who like to wallow in the
| backstories of Got Talent contestants or the families of
| 9/11 victims, the very idea that I'm not interested will
| offend you. But it offends me when I'm subjected to it.
| Autism FTW.
|
| But I'm happy to talk about legal frameworks or whether
| offensive jokes work or not, purely from the central
| perspective. And if you tell an offensive joke that
| happens to correspond to the way I found the bodies of my
| brothers, dead, I won't be offended, I'll laugh. But by
| the same token, I also won't demand that you _pay
| attention to me_ because I was close to somebody who
| died. We all die.
|
| I don't follow Joe Rogan, and I don't follow Alex Jones,
| and I don't follow the Onion, I'm simply relating some
| experiences I've had that I found interesting.
| khazhoux wrote:
| So Alex Jones is just doing an immersive comedy bit.
|
| But Alex Jones is also basing his claims on factual
| citations.
|
| "He's just joking! But he's also telling the truth." Got
| it.
| axoltl wrote:
| Are you implying that Alex Jones is just "doing a bit"? If so,
| could you explain to me what the comedic intent was behind the
| whole "denying a tragedy happened and encouraging the
| harassment of families mourning the loss of their children"
| episode?
| fsckboy wrote:
| watch the Joe Rogan episodes with Alex Jones, keep an open
| mind and you might see what I'm talking about. I have no
| problem with the Onion, I get the humor, but the crowds of
| people horse-laughing and slapping each other on the back
| because they get the joke so they must be "a club", them I
| have no affinity for, just like the pearl clutchers who think
| the Onion is a crime. There is no other implication.
| russdpale wrote:
| This is the dumbest take I have ever seen. I guess spreading
| disinformation that gets people killed is comedy now.
| oldgun wrote:
| Wait. When I first saw this news on Twitter I thought it was a
| joke, since it was a tweet by The Onion.
| liotier wrote:
| I hope they preserve all the URLs - I'm laughing already just
| thinking about the wealth of inbound links soon pointing to
| parodic content.
| lisp2240 wrote:
| I hope they reward the Knowledge Fight guys for helping to make
| this happen
| glenstein wrote:
| I've been a bit out of the loop, may I ask what Knowledge Fight
| did on this front?
| the_optimist wrote:
| The count of comments here celebrating a personal victory is
| astonishing. This is misguided. Time will allow for greater
| reflection and assessment.
| tonymet wrote:
| The Onion is irrelevant. In 3 years they will be gone and Alex
| Jones will pick this up for $5m
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-11-14 23:00 UTC)