Ben Collins, Chief Executive of satirical publication The Onion, posted an update about the recent acquisition of InfoWars. That website went up for auction after former owner and on-air personality Alex Jones filed for bankruptcy. Jones filed after he lost a defamation lawsuit against the families of the Sandy Hook school shooting victims in which he owed upwards of $1.4 billion.
The Onion’s purchase of InfoWars was made with support of the Sandy Hook families. Believing that the new ownership would hinder the spread of horrific misinformation. You know, like saying a school shooting was a false flag…
This purchase is not sitting well with InfoWars’ current owners, who are doing what they do best- spreading misinformation. Diehard followers of the outlet are posting comments on stories about the acquisition with claims that the sale is “illegal” and “violated the 1st amendment.” Most of these claims that are coming directly from Jones, but he can’t seem to explain how these things are true.
Thankfully Collins was willing to give a breakdown of events via a thread posted to X (formally Twitter). A ballsy move considering Elon Musk owns the platform, and vocally supports Jones.
Collins Update
First, Collins discussed how The Onion “can’t wait to relaunch as the dumbest site on the internet.” He then goes on to reconfirm that the company did, in fact, win the bid to purchase InfoWars.
“On Thursday, the person overseeing the auction told us that The Onion’s bid for InfoWars, along with the Connecticut Sandy Hook families, won,” writes Collins. “We haven’t heard anything that changed that — except, of course, from the guys currently running InfoWars, doing InfoWars stuff.” And no one is sure why all their pants are on fire either.
“There was a status conference with the judge overseeing the auction on Thursday shortly after we were deemed winners,” he explains. “The judge had some questions about process and assets. We’re glad he’s doing that, since our bid with the families is clearly the best and transparency is even better. We left the hearing with clear next steps to complete the sale.”
“InfoWars’ current management asked to continue operating until then,” he continued. Apparently the change in ownership has yet to affect content being shared by the outlet. Acquisitions do take time, and this is allowing issues that existed with the previous owners to continue for now.
“We always knew the guys who currently run InfoWars were going to take this badly and use a loss to fundraise off of it,” Collins explained. “They did not disappoint! Obviously, when the current operators of InfoWars went back to operating as a business, they used that to falsely say the auction had been overturned and allege some truly wacky stuff. Something about Saul Alinsky? God bless ‘em.”
What The Future Holds
Collins concluded that this acquisition is like most others in the sense that it’s “going to be fun later on, but annoying right away. Anyway, we look forward to completing this process at the next scheduled court date — which, at present, is a week from Monday. We think it’s all worth it to make a better, funnier future possible. As always: Tu Stultus Es.”
We will keep you posted on coherent updates about The Onion’s purchase of InfoWars.
