Funny concept. Shame that The Onion's writing these days so mid.
I think the Babylon Bee has been a good replacement.
The Onion buys Infowars
81–90 of 1001 posts
Re: The Onion buys Infowars
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The amount of money versus the damage
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?
Re: The Onion buys Infowars
#83The 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
Seems like the article is really gleeful. Somewhat ironic since The Onion could be brought down in the same way by defamation lawsuits.
it absolutely can not, satire is protected under the first amendment and there are piles of precedence
Re: The Onion buys Infowars
#84Tim 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…
I'd chip in just to have that shit destroyed and see them selling onions instead.
Re: The Onion buys Infowars
#85I'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…
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.
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.
Re: The Onion buys Infowars
#86The 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
Seems like the article is really gleeful. Somewhat ironic since The Onion could be brought down in the same way by defamation lawsuits.
Great point! When The Onion starts making threats against survivors and relatives of school shootings, they should also face defamation lawsuits.
Re: The Onion buys Infowars
#87Tim 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…
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!
Re: The Onion buys Infowars
#88There'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…
> 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.*
Re: The Onion buys Infowars
#89I'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…
He knowingly rallied his supporters to harass the victims and their families. That's a bit more than "someone ranting on the internet".
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.
Re: The Onion buys Infowars
#90Really 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
I'd be surprised if there weren't any safeguards to prevent Infowars from posting hate ever again.