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consumer451

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/3law22g...

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

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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!

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.

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.

> 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

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.

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.

> I believe we ask and expect too much of satire

Yes, if you expect anything from satire you expect too much. Let it be art, not propaganda.

Allow yourself to find poor execution of agreeable messages distasteful. Allow yourself to enjoy good execution of messages you disagree with.

> Let it be art, not propaganda.

My friend I have some news for you.

Edit: almost ended it there but remembered what website I’m on.

I don’t think there’s a material difference between art and propaganda. The art you like is merely the propaganda which you do not question.

So..... Monet's Water Lilies is propaganda....

What is it's message?

Floating flowers rule, land flowers drool

"The classical tradition of "accurate" painting (Raphael and Michelangelo and Rembrandt) is not exciting.

But we're not ready to go full on free jazz/postmodernist/de-constructionist. You're not ready for it yet, but your kids are going to love it."

For a contemporary example, what is the message of a painting of a watermelon?

It could be merely that watermelons are beautiful. Or it could be that the artist supports the people of Palestine.

For a less extreme example, think about the paintings of Norman Rockwell. Are they just pretty images? Or do they communicate norms?

Think also about what is censored vs what is not censored.

Chairmansteve didn’t ask about theoretical paintings of watermelons that you have imagined though, he asked about Water Lilies by Monet, which is art that famously exists and is liked by many, many real people.

If your point is “all art is propaganda aside from art that exists and must be replaced piece-by-piece with hypothetical counterparts in my head to support this conjecture” you could have just written that. Though “some art is propaganda and some is not” is less profound sounding than “all art is propaganda”

the ephemeral beauty i strive constantly to capture, studying these same details in this same garden across the infinitely variable day, this honest and perfect imperfection that i'm famous for revealing and sharing with the world, is within every moment of every life and every human being.

(significantly he made a gift of these paintings to the french state as a war memorial)

I disagree on the point that art is propaganda, but I can't point out almost all art contains a propaganda of some kind. Monet's Water Lilies influences common viewers to find a beauty and romanticism in simple nature. Long exposure to Monet will in general make people gaze more appreciatively at trees every now and then.

Propaganda doesn't inherently mean bad or political. Healthy lifestyle propaganda is actually a good thing, for example (also the current healthy lifestyle propaganda seems poorly executed. I much prefer the 60s american, european and soviet versions of it).

> The art you like is merely the propaganda which you do not question.

I like this thought because it can be directly refuted by Cotton Eye Joe by Rednex — a highly popular piece of art that does nothing but present the audience with questions to ponder.

You can execute the message "We think you, and people like you, should be killed" as well as you like, I'm still not going to enjoy it.

> Let it be art, not propaganda

You cannot “explain what you do believe under the cover of pretending to dismiss it” without blurring the line between propaganda and art. That is true of both the best art and propaganda. If someone disagrees with the message, or coöpts it, it’s propaganda.

> Allow yourself to find poor execution of agreeable messages distasteful. Allow yourself to enjoy good execution of messages you disagree with.

This makes sense. If you find yourself understanding and judging messages based simply off of their merits then you have failed to insert an arbitrary aesthetic filter into your cognitive process. The wisest sages know to value style over substance

One could say 'the wisest sages know to value style and substance'

Or even: 'the wisest sages know that incorrect results can be based on some sound thinking and some muddled thinking, and correct results can be derived by tortuous thinking'

Or maybe: 'the wisest sages know that some things are neither objectively true nor objectively false, and can appreciate good arguments for positions they disagree with'

I'm not sure I agree with you (your parent could be taken to simply mean, appreciate good-faith arguments, even if you disagree with them), but I appreciate your contextual use of satire.

>I often suggest that satire is a dangerous double edged sword and not a good primary vehicle for positive change.

When I write with the intent of my words being read at face value I get downvoted, flagged or my post get sent into the void by some AI depending on platform.

So satire and memes it is.

Can't decide if the people downvoting you don't realise the irony, or are deliberately downvoting you for the irony.

Those are all still far more positive than negative examples, even if they each spawned small contingents of people who don't get the irony. Plus, if you know that's gonna happen anyway, then steer the dumb ironic interpretations towards something equally useful - or so ridiculous it at least educates other people.

> 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.

Indeed. It's amazing to me how many people I encounter these days who don't appear to consider hypocrisy a moral failing.

been shamed too many times, man. Moral failing itself became just a button people try to press in my brain. Often very dishonest people. So, welcome to moral learned helplessness, and damn the moralizers.

ALSO: thinking means changing your mind, which often exposes you to being called a hypocrite

Satire is not a tool for change. In fact the opposite as laughter sublimates the emotions that would otherwise lead to action (cf Orwell’s 1984).

However people are not always in a position to change things and satire can be a useful outlet for venting, but culturally can also be good for providing talking points.

Southpark and the Onion strike a chord with me the others less so, I think because they believe that they are agents for change.

I love John Oliver though. He follows up his rants with some sensible ideas sometimes. Not everyone’s cup of tea though for sure.

> The core idea of satire

I've never read this definition from any historical author or famous literary critic. I think you made this up yourself from first principles-- am I right on that?

In any case, this definition would make a special case out of Animal Farm which is probably the most famous satire. I cringe imagining Orwell have one of the animals "dismiss" his preferred theoretical vision of good governance as a wink to the audience. I don't even think Orwell presumed to know what that would look like.

Satire requires a good deal of intelligence and education to both write and consume. Without those two inputs, satire is a propaganda.

When you take a satirical concept and ratchet up the absurdity such that only ignorant (willfully or otherwise) people believe it, the result can be a powerful influence over them. Conspiracy theories often use this approach, as do talking heads on some networks.

Think about how early Stephen Colbert skits often comprised of him acting like Bill O'Reilly; not saying funny things in the style of O'Reilly, but merely imitating him. The difference between satire and propaganda is often packaging and audience.

For another example, you can look at posts of people who read Onion articles without realizing they are satire. These people are often pissed off, so much so that they share a 3 year old article on social media to spread the word.

The original idea of satire was to make fun of unjust leaders. It doesn’t have to be as sophisticated as swift at all. It just has to strike a chord (originally, literally) with the audience.

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...

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

- Project Timber Sycamore

- The Douma Gas hoax

Fun times.

> documented conspiracies that aren't hypotheticals

And, ironically since it's what launched Jones' career, Bohemian Club & Grove: 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://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

> And, ironically since it's what launched Jones' career, Bohemian Club & Grove: 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

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.

I think it's interesting that so many governmental and corporate leaders meet up (or maybe met up? in the 20th Century) to talk shop outside the view of the public eye. It's relevant to anyone who wants to study Bay Area history or the history of World War Ⅱ technologies. For example, the Manhattan Project: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-1_Executive_Committee#/media...

> “The September 1942 meeting [of the S-1 Executive Committee] was held at Bohemian Grove. Nichols and Major Thomas T. Crenshaw, Jr., attended, along with physicist Robert Oppenheimer. This meeting resolved most of the outstanding issues confronting the [Manhattan] project, but [Vannevar] Bush and [James B.] Conant felt that the time had now come for the Army to take over the project, something that had already been approved by the president on June 17, 1942. After some discussion, it was decided that [Leslie R.] Groves, who would be promoted to the rank of brigadier general, would become the director of the Manhattan Project on September 23, 1942. He would be answerable to the Military Policy Committee (MPC), which would consist of Styer, Bush (with Conant as his alternate) and Rear Admiral William R. Purnell.”

> 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.

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.

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.

I think this is called "Black Propaganda".

Those links don’t work for me. But these do:

https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:x4qyokjtdzgl7gmqhsw4ajqj/po...

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.

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.

You were correct. When you replied, I tried my links and indeed they did not work at the time.

Only for the platform to die in a month anyway, when everybody inadvertenly runs back to Twitter...

People are deleting their Musk Social accounts, they literally and figuratively have nothing to go back to.

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.

The Onion is truly a national treasure.

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.

My friend, you have eaten the onion.

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.

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.

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.

Area man is consistently fooled by The Onion.

Got im

I find this comment so funny I burst out laughing. I cannot tell whether you're serious.

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!

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

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

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

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

judge blocked

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.

> 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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

> "That's not impressive, that's what the vast majority of people do."

The vast majority of people don’t have to endure someone with an audience of millions falsely claiming their murdered children were part of a government conspiracy. Under those circumstances, many might be driven to retaliate violently. It’s a testament to these individuals' strength and restraint that they pursued justice through the legal system instead.

Life is not a movie. People are boring, want to avoid trouble as much as possible and don't even seriously consider the use of violence even when they are deeply hurt. The father who kills his kids' rapist? Very very rare.

> Their intention was to silence him. Literally what they said; which is illegal.

No, defamation is illegal. Me suing you for lying and directly causing me financial harm is not illegal.

> These are normal people, what are you talking about?

They've gotten a lot of money on account of the fact their families were victims of a tragedy. I'm assuming they don't need more money because they literally turned down a few hundred thousand dollars from Jones.

Also, this "what are you talking about?" BS needs to stop. You know what I'm talking about, or at least you can assume. Don't pretend like what I'm saying is so outrageous and unbelievable. You can respond without being annoying, please and thank you.

They already got $73M from Remington. I wouldn't be after more money if I were in that position.

Maybe the families were more interested in fixing the issue than in receiving some blood money in exchange for continued harm.

Well they asked for money, not "fixing the issue", which is not enforceable anyway without violating the 1st so that's not even a power the court has. Alex Jones will still be able to speak and profit from it, just not under the Infowars brand.

Lawyers file cases they can win to establish legal precedent.

The 1st amendment doesn't protect all forms of speech. Shouting Fire in a theater, sedition, inciting mobs, entrapment, accessory to a crime (by encouraging someone to do it). None of these are covered in the 1st Amendment.

> Lawyers file cases they can win to establish legal precedent.

That's actually very rare. Most cases get settled out of court and most court case don't make it to appeal; thus no legal precedent.

> Shouting Fire in a theater

This is a common misconception. This decision was reversed by the Supreme Court.

> sedition, inciting mobs, entrapment, accessory to a crime (by encouraging someone to do it). None of these are covered in the 1st Amendment.

None of which are what Jones was sued for.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the...

… he was sued for defamation[1], which is sort in line with the parent's point that the 1A doesn't grant you unfettered immunity to the consequences of your speech.

AIUI, the cases in total have awarded nearly $2B cumulative to the plaintiffs. That's a pretty hefty sum. According to Wikipedia, most of it hasn't been paid by Jones. ("By the end of the summer of 2023, Jones had paid nothing to the families" [for $1.5B of the cumulative penalties, 1])

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Jones#Sandy_Hook_Elementa...

> This is a common misconception. This decision was reversed by the Supreme Court.

(IANAL.) Partially overturned. And the existing jurisprudence still seems to say that like the above, you'd be held accountable for your actions. It isn't going to be "you can't say that", it would be something like "your actions (shouting fire, falsely) caused a stampede, and people were trampled, and you're now charged with manslaughter". (The Wikipedia article goes into this, too.)

I was more referring to his whole demographic mistakenly believing the first amendment should mean you get to be a kook or an asshole with no consequences.

And he’s definitely experiencing consequences.

Also on the Sandy Hook case, Remington settled out of court, which prevents setting precedent on culpability in gun violence.

Exactly. What would make me feel better if my children were shot and killed? Censorship, obviously.

So, as it turns out, the auction was fraudulent and stopped by the judge...

I looked it up, but I can't find any article claiming the judge had made a ruling yet. The most recent news I can find [1] simply states that the auction loser is making a legal challenge, and that a hearing will happen in the future (the date scheduled at the last hearing was nov. 25th). Do you have a reputable news source for that claim?

[1]: https://www.npr.org/2024/11/19/g-s1-34985/alex-jones-infowar...

It was an emergency ruling. The takeover that was supposed to happen was blocked. What The onion was $2M below another offer.

Did the original offer include shutting down Infowars? Of not I expect many of them feel they got plenty more that whatever cash Jones was offering. There is more to this life than money.

> Did the original offer include shutting down Infowars?

That was part of the SH families' lawyer final argument to the jury.

> There is more to this life than money.

Sure. But there's not much a civil lawsuit can ask outside of damages and reparations.

And yet seeing the case through to the end instead of taking the first offer has seen Infowars taken from Alex Jones. I don't speak for the families, but if I were in their shoes that would be far more valuable to me than maximizing my payout.

Alex Jones just created a new company and be shielded by Texas very protective laws against civil damages. So they accomplished nothing and will get barely nothing after legal costs.

Those Texas laws would only shield him in Texas courts. He can try to use a choice of forum clause in his terms of service to force lawsuits to take place in Texas but that only works with people who are subject to those terms of service.

Unless Jones manages to limit himself to telling lies about people who use his new company he will be open to lawsuits outside of Texas.

I don't think the families wanted money. They wanted to ruin his life.

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