6 ms·

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 pl

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/3law22gmbfk26 https://bsky.app/profile/bencollins.bsky.social/post/3law22g... [1] https://bsky.app/profile/bencollins.bsky.social/post/3law23rslrk26 https://bsky.app/profile/bencollins.bsky.social/post/3law23r...

gorbachev 2y ago
Is that enough to tank the market with a fire sale? Probably not.
TomK32 2y ago
I'd chip in just to have that shit destroyed and see them selling onions instead.
josefresco 2y ago
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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    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 2y ago
      > 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 2y ago
        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 2y ago
        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.
- reaperducer 2y ago
  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-infowars-the-onion.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/14/business/media/alex-jones...
- burnt-resistor 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    - Project Timber Sycamore - The Douma Gas hoax Fun times.
  - Lammy 2y ago
    > documented conspiracies that aren't hypotheticals And, ironically since it's what launched Jones' career, Bohemian Club & Grove: https://x.com/abbieasr/status/1462953203067240450 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://archive.org/details/bwb_W7-BOG-168 https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1SkFrgLj-TR4gyw9Y4mqcKWAUZUw&ll=38.19757197708177%2C-122.787061&z=9 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXh0bQIZw1g
    - Lammy 2y ago
      > And, ironically since it's what launched Jones' career, Bohemian Club & Grove: https://x.com/abbieasr/status/1462953203067240450 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 https://x.com/abbieasr/status/1312512066071060480
      - quickthrowman 2y ago
        What is the conspiracy? It’s a social club for old rich men that has some goofy rituals. It’s just freemasonry for the upper crust elite.
- hinkley 2y ago
  [flagged]
- akira2501 2y ago
  > 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.
  - idle_zealot 2y ago
    It's amoral (sic) to improve the accuracy of a journalistic publication you've purchased? I'm struggling to find a more charitable way to interpret your statement. Or is just the usage of the word "duped"? Some people are more interested in sensational rhetoric than more even-keeled reporting. It's unfortunate that they're currently mostly taken advantage of by hucksters. I think the creation of publications genuinely interested in facts but that use more appealing rhetoric is important to preserving journalism as an institution.
- MathMonkeyMan 2y ago
  The receptive audience would notice and then find other venues, I suspect. Especially with the warning of the former webmaster. Crazy bullshit is only tempting if it's part of your engrieved group. A clever roleplay won't have the spiritual depravtivy needed.
- trash_cat 2y ago
  I think this is called "Black Propaganda".
dmvdoug 2y ago
The Onion is truly a national treasure.
- kobalsky 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    My friend, you have eaten the onion.
    - kobalsky 2y ago
      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 2y ago
        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.
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
        dicknuckle 2y ago
        More likely to be a case of not being familiar with US politics and events. We're not the world, and plenty of Americans forget that.
  - 2y ago
TeeMassive 2y ago
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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    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 2y ago
      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.
      - TeeMassive 2y ago
        Their intention was to silence him. Literally what they said; which is illegal. > They don't need money, These are normal people, what are you talking about? > I'm very impressed at their restraint in choosing the legal system over violence. That's not impressive, that's what the vast majority of people do.
latexr 2y ago
Those links don’t work for me. But these do: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:x4qyokjtdzgl7gmqhsw4ajqj/post/3law22gmbfk26 https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:x4qyokjtdzgl7gmqhsw4ajqj/po... https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:x4qyokjtdzgl7gmqhsw4ajqj/post/3law23rslrk26 https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:x4qyokjtdzgl7gmqhsw4ajqj/po...
- consumer451 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    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 2y ago
      You were correct. When you replied, I tried my links and indeed they did not work at the time.
  - 71bw 2y ago
    Only for the platform to die in a month anyway, when everybody inadvertenly runs back to Twitter...
    - verdverm 2y ago
      People are deleting their Musk Social accounts, they literally and figuratively have nothing to go back to.
      - 71bw 2y ago
        They are too terminally online to warrant deleting accounts. I, already, can see the 'I'm going to Bluesky!!!!!' crowd returning and definitely not in single digit numbers.
tombert 2y ago
They don't have to do much, it's already very funny and very stupid.
- notahacker 2y ago
  Yeah, my first thought was "the Sandy Hook parents chipped in for you to leave it as it is?"
imiric 2y ago
> 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 2y ago
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 2y ago
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.
- idle_zealot 2y ago
  > Dude tried a career in journalism. > Had a crazy theory that a school shooting was fake. This is absolutely not what happened. Jones is a grifter, and was never a journalist. He had no journalistic aspirations, and peddled exclusively in inane conspiracy theories either crafted personally or adopted selectively to inspire a constant state of fear and paranoia in a particular type of vulnerable person while aggressively channeling their anxieties into purchases of his prepper gear and phony health supplement business. This is a rare case of such a fraudster managing to accrue enough ire and attention that legal charges stuck and sunk him for the harm caused by one of his many careless lies. There are many like him who continue on with much the same strategy, some of whom have gained enough power and influence through their actions that they are now effectively untouchable by the legal system.
yieldcrv 2y ago
judge blocked

gorbachev 2y ago

Is that enough to tank the market with a fire sale? Probably not.

TomK32 2y ago

I'd chip in just to have that shit destroyed and see them selling onions instead.

josefresco 2y ago

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 2y ago
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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    > 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 2y ago
      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 2y ago
        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.
reaperducer 2y ago
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-infowars-the-onion.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/14/business/media/alex-jones...
burnt-resistor 2y ago
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 2y ago
  - Project Timber Sycamore - The Douma Gas hoax Fun times.
- Lammy 2y ago
  > documented conspiracies that aren't hypotheticals And, ironically since it's what launched Jones' career, Bohemian Club & Grove: https://x.com/abbieasr/status/1462953203067240450 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://archive.org/details/bwb_W7-BOG-168 https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1SkFrgLj-TR4gyw9Y4mqcKWAUZUw&ll=38.19757197708177%2C-122.787061&z=9 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXh0bQIZw1g
  - Lammy 2y ago
    > And, ironically since it's what launched Jones' career, Bohemian Club & Grove: https://x.com/abbieasr/status/1462953203067240450 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 https://x.com/abbieasr/status/1312512066071060480
    - quickthrowman 2y ago
      What is the conspiracy? It’s a social club for old rich men that has some goofy rituals. It’s just freemasonry for the upper crust elite.
hinkley 2y ago
[flagged]
akira2501 2y ago
> 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.
- idle_zealot 2y ago
  It's amoral (sic) to improve the accuracy of a journalistic publication you've purchased? I'm struggling to find a more charitable way to interpret your statement. Or is just the usage of the word "duped"? Some people are more interested in sensational rhetoric than more even-keeled reporting. It's unfortunate that they're currently mostly taken advantage of by hucksters. I think the creation of publications genuinely interested in facts but that use more appealing rhetoric is important to preserving journalism as an institution.
MathMonkeyMan 2y ago
The receptive audience would notice and then find other venues, I suspect. Especially with the warning of the former webmaster. Crazy bullshit is only tempting if it's part of your engrieved group. A clever roleplay won't have the spiritual depravtivy needed.
trash_cat 2y ago
I think this is called "Black Propaganda".

dmvdoug 2y ago

The Onion is truly a national treasure.

kobalsky 2y ago
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 2y ago
  My friend, you have eaten the onion.
  - kobalsky 2y ago
    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 2y ago
      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.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - dicknuckle 2y ago
        More likely to be a case of not being familiar with US politics and events. We're not the world, and plenty of Americans forget that.
- 2y ago

TeeMassive 2y ago

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 2y ago
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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    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.
    - TeeMassive 2y ago
      Their intention was to silence him. Literally what they said; which is illegal. > They don't need money, These are normal people, what are you talking about? > I'm very impressed at their restraint in choosing the legal system over violence. That's not impressive, that's what the vast majority of people do.

latexr 2y ago

Those links don’t work for me. But these do: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:x4qyokjtdzgl7gmqhsw4ajqj/post/3law22gmbfk26 https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:x4qyokjtdzgl7gmqhsw4ajqj/po... https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:x4qyokjtdzgl7gmqhsw4ajqj/post/3law23rslrk26 https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:x4qyokjtdzgl7gmqhsw4ajqj/po...

consumer451 2y ago
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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    You were correct. When you replied, I tried my links and indeed they did not work at the time.
- 71bw 2y ago
  Only for the platform to die in a month anyway, when everybody inadvertenly runs back to Twitter...
  - verdverm 2y ago
    People are deleting their Musk Social accounts, they literally and figuratively have nothing to go back to.
    - 71bw 2y ago
      They are too terminally online to warrant deleting accounts. I, already, can see the 'I'm going to Bluesky!!!!!' crowd returning and definitely not in single digit numbers.

tombert 2y ago

They don't have to do much, it's already very funny and very stupid.

notahacker 2y ago
Yeah, my first thought was "the Sandy Hook parents chipped in for you to leave it as it is?"

imiric 2y ago

> 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 2y ago

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 2y ago

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.

idle_zealot 2y ago
> Dude tried a career in journalism. > Had a crazy theory that a school shooting was fake. This is absolutely not what happened. Jones is a grifter, and was never a journalist. He had no journalistic aspirations, and peddled exclusively in inane conspiracy theories either crafted personally or adopted selectively to inspire a constant state of fear and paranoia in a particular type of vulnerable person while aggressively channeling their anxieties into purchases of his prepper gear and phony health supplement business. This is a rare case of such a fraudster managing to accrue enough ire and attention that legal charges stuck and sunk him for the harm caused by one of his many careless lies. There are many like him who continue on with much the same strategy, some of whom have gained enough power and influence through their actions that they are now effectively untouchable by the legal system.

yieldcrv 2y ago

judge blocked