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The Onion buys Infowars

nytimes.com

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Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#721

Post by amaizhe »

nixdev wrote: post #363
TomK32 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you missed the bit where Jones's lawyer sent a full copy of his phone to the plaintiff's legal team. Alex Jones says, no lies, a lot of things but the evidence that he lies is there https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/03/alex-jones-s...

I did not miss this. I followed this closely as it happened. And this "gotcha" right here, that he does not have perfect memory of all of his text messages sent over the two years previous, was the most significant allegation that has been brought to light against him. And, those text messages revealed nothing of substance, they had nothing to charge with him with. They didn't even attempt to charge him. They didn't…

You're being intellectually dishonest, the argument was never that he did not have "perfect memory of all his text messages," it was that in discovery he claimed he searched for and found _no_ text messages pertaining to Sandy Hook, when in fact the evidence accidentally revealed by his own counsel showed that relevant messages did exist, and were retained. A perfunctory search for the term "Sandy Hook" should have turned up those text messages, meaning he either lied about performing the search, or (more likely) lied about the search not turning up anything. Either way, abuse of discovery.

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#722

Post by ravenstine »

SimbaOnSteroids wrote: post #573
EvanAnderson wrote: post #439

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.

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.

They should make a video of Jones actually eating his neighbors.

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#723

Post by toomanyrichies »

lynndotpy wrote: post #585

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…

Thanks for sharing. Watching your mom deteriorate like that must have been hard, to say the least.

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#725

Post by sverhagen »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #444

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-s1-518939…

>bought Infowars and hired him back to keep doing his show

So, if any, where's the value? In InfoWars, or with Jones? I.e., can't he just go into a new venture, or go onto someone's payroll?

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#729

Post by 2c2c2c »

wyager wrote: post #572
sjsdaiuasgdia wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

what's the standard now for a not close election? dems have to always win the popular vote now?

4 swing states were decided by a 1% difference. this election was close.

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#730

Post by jezjezjezjust »

rconti wrote: post #656
MetaWhirledPeas wrote: post #625

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.

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!"

Jezebel wrote an article in 2013 about feeding the trolls until the explode [1]. I disagree today, and it seems quaint. IRL, professional trolls, the Proud Boys, come to my town (Portland) to stir up shit every few years. Do we ignore them? Or do we subscribe to "broken window theory": if they get an inch they'll take a mile? I have a tough time with this, both responses seem correct and wrong at the same time, but there's no way to tell which is working.

[1] https://www.jezebel.com/dont-ignore-the-trolls-feed-them-unt...

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