That is a question that has lingered in my mind ever since I heard they were auctioning off Infowars. Infowars is Alex Jones. Sure, he’s got a few other “hosts”, but can you name any? Have you ever seen an Infowars clip that didn’t feature Jones?
If I were The Onion, I’d be conducting a nation-wide talent search for a Jones look-alike, and then try spoofing the audience.
But, even if they unsubscribe, they’ll still have their contact details. And that shit can be sold to every scammer in the world.
I’d be surprised if the subscriptions don’t run for at least a year, renew automatically and are not more difficult to cancel than Amazon Prime. That would mean about six months (on average: some about to expire, some still one year to go) of subscription revenues from now on.
“All she had to do was stop the war in Lebanon and Gaza and she would receive everyone’s votes here,” Dearborn’s Democratic mayor, Abdullah Hammoud, told the Associated Press.
As if the vice president could stop another country’s war?! That blithering idiot. I agree with EddyTeddyFreddy, this is the stupidest of the stupid MFers in the news. What is that bubble-brain even doing in politics?
Unfortunately it seems to be a common attitude, as long as I can recall people have acted like the US President could somehow just declare peace over there and make it stick (without trying to occupy a nuclear armed country).
It’s reminiscent of the late 90s, when the Taliban were first trying to make Afghanistan even worse. People kept demanding that someone “do something” about it, as if the “something” wouldn’t involve invading the country, and running it for a few decades.
We all saw how well that worked out post-9/11.
At the end of the day, if you aren’t willing to break stuff and kill people, you are willing to let foreign governments do whatever they want. Sure, we can use “sanctions”, but those ultimately have little effect. Sanctions didn’t stop North Korea from getting the bomb, they haven’t stopped Iran from trying to get the bomb or exporting terrorism to other countries, and they haven’t ended Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Why does this, along with the whole Onion purchase, make me imagine an 80’s Eddie Murphy vehicle, with him in whiteface, a fatsuit, and playing the part of “Axel” Jones while channeling Axel Foley?
More seriously, I am really surprised to hear the the Onion did this. They probably do pretty well for themselves but I doubt that they are rolling in dough to the point that they can spend a huge bundle on a bit of trollery. Either they are doing better than I thought, or there were really no serious buyers at the auction. Both of which feel me with glee (the latter more so of course).
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.
This story from upthread contains the following paragraph.
The Onion also announced that it had partnered with the gun-control advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety to facilitate the acquisition, which would serve as an exclusive advertising partner for the Infowars relaunch under its new parent company. “It’s fitting that a platform once used to profit off of tragedy will be a tool of education, hence our multiyear advertising commitment to this new venture,” John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, added in Tuesday’s statement. “We’re proud to be a part of what comes next, not only in terms of staunching the flow of hurtful misinformation, but also for the potential this new venture has to help Everytown reach new audiences ready to hold the gun industry accountable for contributing to our nation’s gun violence epidemic.”
IIRC, Everytown For Gun Safety was founded by Michael Bloomberg, who is still very involved with the group. I’m thinking he could afford to quietly bankroll the bid.
If so, it was a smart purchase for someone who (by several accounts) really does want to see MAGA-style “thinking” minimized. (A lot of them won’t know this change of ownership has happened and may go to the site, accidentally being exposed to facts along with the humor.)
