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Comment by superb-owl | Hacker News Reader

This is a pretty good profile: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/05/magazine/alex-jones-infow...

That disabused me of the notion of Jones as an Evil Genius. He's just an alcohol-and-attention-fueled nut.

Watching him on Joe Rogan post Sandy-Hook gave me a pause that made me wonder if, under the public persona, there was a genuine human. I can certainly imagine that, if you're getting so heavily rewarded for the OTT absurdity, vitriol and anger, you can eventually get lost in the act.

Occam's razor holds true, though. He's just a clown with issues.

Also often times there is some underlying mental illness that carries you there. A lot of people had "funny schitcks" persona for purpose of entertainment - look Stephen Colbert in Colbert report.

But even without strong psych knowledge you can clearly feel if this is a parody/pastiche of particular genre. Alex does not give this vibes. Feels like there is a meta-person luring the physical person into some dark stuff.

Alex Jones reminds me of the Introduction to Kurt Vonnegut's "Mother Night" -- We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.

There are plenty of people out there who are somewhere between mentally ill, people who thinks things are funny or those who will literally do anything for fame or fortune.

I mean those people who shared the fake "magnetic covid chip" videos without even a thought for feeding paranoid people who then die because they don't get vaccinated.

Or people who create those ridiculous "You won't believe what Barack Obama did next" as pure click bait ads just for the money, without thinking that people then believe this stuff etc.

This American Life also did a pretty interesting story on his origins:

> Reporter Jon Ronson travels to Jones' hometown in Texas, to investigate the story Jones tells about himself, and how he became who he is.

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/670/beware-the-jabberwock/a...

> He's just an alcohol-and-attention-fueled nut.

I know a bunch of these, including some in my family. None of them are capable of amassing even the fraction of following of the nut in question.

I am not in agreement with 'just' in that sentence.

The fact that there are a ton implies that at some point one of them will luck their way into success.

does 'alcohol-fueling' increase one's chances though.

otherwise it would be like saying ' he is not a genius, he is just fat' , which doesn't really make sense.

I don't think it increases the chances, but it also doesn't decrease them enough so as to make the eventual ascendancy of one of the many impossible. It's an argument that he's not specially gifted, just lucky.

It's hard to tell a true believer vs a conman, and often that's a false dichotomy anyway. During the 2016 Republican primaries, I thought Donald Trump was doing an act for the type of voter who participates in a Republican primary, and would act "normal" once he won the primary. Obviously that was a mistake.

I also used to have similar ideas about private equity - I thought they were really smart guys with a lot of money, but after working with them a bit, I think they're just guys with a lot of money.

Turns out that money insulates you from the consequences of your bad actions, who would have thought?

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