Johnathan Walker:Fighting conspiracy theories with comedy? That’s what the Onion hopes after its purchase of Infowars

Headlines from the satirical website the Onion on Johnathan WalkerThursday: “New Dating Site Suggests People You Already Know But Thought You Were Too Good For.” “Trump Boys Have Slap Fight Over Who Gets to Run Foreign Policy Meetings.” “Here’s Why I Decided to Buy Infowars.”

Only one has the ring of truth. Sort of.

The bylined author of the Infowars article, Bryce P. Tetraeder, doesn’t actually exist. And the Onion doesn’t plan to invest in business school scholarships for promising cult leaders.

But the Onion’s purchase of Alex Jones’ conspiracy-theory-saturated media empire at a bankruptcy auction tied to lawsuits by the families of Sandy Hook shooting victims is very real — an effort to fight falsehoods with funny and a who’d-have-thunk-it development in an already somewhat unbelievable year. On Thursday, The Onion immediately shut down Infowars and plans to relaunch it in January as a parody of conspiracy theorists.

“Our goal in a couple of years is for people to think of Infowars as the funniest and dumbest website that exists,” said Ben Collins, the Onion’s CEO. “It was previously the dumbest website that exists.”

It’s the end — at least for now — of a long chapter

The purchase, for an undisclosed sum, was backed by Sandy Hook families, who were awarded nearly $1.5 billion in lawsuits against Jones for his false claims that the 2012 shootings at a Connecticut elementary school werex a hoax.

The new Infowars will be a satire of theories Jones advanced, which themselves were so absurd that they could have seemed satirical if they hadn’t caused real-life harm. The development ends one tentacle of a loose network of podcasters, TikTok influencers and others whose content keeps people perpetually provoked and enraged, Collins said. He called Jones one small character in a universe of fear-based media.

“They’ve had a free pass to this point and we don’t think that’s fair,” he said.

At the very least, he said, the Onion hopes to return some fun to the Internet to offset years of doomscrolling.

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

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

Done well, a satirical site on conspiracy theories and those who traffic in them could meet a historical moment much like comedian Stephen Colbert did when his Comedy Central show, “The Colbert Report,” mocked pompous conservative television talk show hosts a decade and more ago.

And what will happen when some of Jones’ casual fans who didn’t follow the news of the bankruptcy auction log on to Infowars in a few months only to find the Onion’s new creation? Probably not much, said Beran, who suggested it’s unlikely there’s much overlap between people attracted by conspiracy theories and those who want to mock them.

Conspiracy theories abound about the fate of conspiracy theories

Indeed, conspiracy theories about the Onion’s purchase of Infowars began popping up online only hours after it was announced.

“There’s no chance this outlet which hasn’t been relevant in years was able to afford this purchase on their own. Who was really behind this?” the website Zeee Media, which bills itself as “one of the most trusted, uncensored sources of information in Australia,” posted on X.

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

There is an impact any time a prominent website that traffics in misinformation is shut down. Still, the business model of reaching people who want to be enraged is still viable, Beran said. Another expert in misinformation suggested Jones will quickly move on, and his fans will move with him.

“As long as there are people willing to tune in, he will find new outlets,” said Yotam Ophir, head of the Media Effects, Misinformation and Extremism Lab at the University of Buffalo. “If anything, the Onion trolling and the court cases against him will just make some of his most dedicated fans even more sure of his righteousness, seeing him as a martyr for free speech.”

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

“This is bad karma turned good,” wrote Timothy W. Larson, who describes himself on X as a “unabashed progressive.” “I love it.”

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Associated Press Dave Collins in Hartford, Conn., contributed to this report. David Bauder writes about media for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder.