Speaker 1: Welcome to the nonprofits, and today we're going to do
Speaker 1: something a little bit different. We're going to talk about
Speaker 1: something fun. At the beginning, when satire clashes a reality,
Speaker 1: hilarity ensues. The Onion, King of Sarcasms, spends a bold
Speaker 1: narrative over now owning Alex Jones by literally owning info Wars. Meanwhile, Jones,
Speaker 1: the unintentional performance artist of conspiracy Land, is reportedly scrambling
Speaker 1: to keep the parody from becoming his personal reality. It's
Speaker 1: a metajoke for the ages, the grand overlord of fake
Speaker 1: news out faked by professional satirists. As Joan rants about
Speaker 1: the deep State satire ops, one can't help but marvel
Speaker 1: at the absurd symmetry of it all. Satire, it seems,
Speaker 1: might just be the most effective truth serum. These articles
Speaker 1: are from The Onion by Bryce P. Tettergard the CEO,
Speaker 1: on November fourteen, twenty twenty four, and The New Republic
Speaker 1: by Ellie Quinlan hultailing on November eighteenth, twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: I have to admit I had quite a laugh when
Speaker 1: I first saw this, in spite of the seriousness of
Speaker 1: the story. But Stephen going to you, what do you
Speaker 1: think this Downfall. Alex Jones's downfall reflects on the consequences
Speaker 1: of building an empire field on outrage and divisiveness.
Speaker 2: I have to love the irony of Jones who has
Speaker 2: spent so very much time and energy into sowing vitriol
Speaker 2: to support and empower a certain demographic of people, and
Speaker 2: those people have reaped the benefit of this toxic miasm
Speaker 2: that he's been creating and spreading, and now, in his
Speaker 2: hour of need, when he really could use the backing
Speaker 2: of some of these wealthy people, they leave him out
Speaker 2: to dry. I think that that is just a beautiful
Speaker 2: turn of the coat that the people who have benefited
Speaker 2: the most from info Wars, outside of Jones himself, want
Speaker 2: nothing to do with keeping him and his voice is active.
Speaker 2: I think this is this could have happened to a
Speaker 2: worst individual, and I'm very happy to hear that things
Speaker 2: are not going as he pleased.
Speaker 1: You know, I have to completely agree, because he just
Speaker 1: absolutely was the turd in the punch bowl for I
Speaker 1: don't know how long. And it's good to see though
Speaker 1: that the people around them they're no better than him,
Speaker 1: because they're ready to dump him just as soon as
Speaker 1: they get a chance. A j switching over to you,
Speaker 1: I know that he had certain products that definitely reflected
Speaker 1: onto his branding and audience of info Wars. What kind
Speaker 1: of what did you have to say about that?
Speaker 3: He actually knows, you know, Alex Joan was under the
Speaker 3: impression that the good guys on the right were going
Speaker 3: to be buying info Wars after he was forced to
Speaker 3: put it up for auction, and apparently some of his
Speaker 3: supporters showed interest in the purchase, but none of them
Speaker 3: work out, and the only mirror was the company that
Speaker 3: runs the onion. So what did he do? He decided
Speaker 3: to take mothers into his own hands by having one
Speaker 3: of his other companies make a bit unsuccessfully of course.
Speaker 3: And this company, as you mentioned, has some products, and
Speaker 3: the company is called First United American Companies, which is
Speaker 3: ironically abbreiated fuck fan Prohounds and that correctly sounds like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So they what they do is they sell dietary supplements,
Speaker 3: and some of these supplements that they sell are really interesting.
Speaker 3: One of them is called info Wars Life Brainforce Plus.
Speaker 3: I don't know exactly what that does, like, does that
Speaker 3: puts some kind of conspiracy theories into your brain? And
Speaker 3: the other one is the best one. Okay, it's pretty epic,
Speaker 3: and it's called Info Wars Life, Super Male Vitality. So
Speaker 3: if any of you guys here in the panel need
Speaker 3: to get your daily those of toxic masculinity, just go
Speaker 3: ahead and find Alex Jones.
Speaker 1: Well, I would definitely hope that that would be a
Speaker 1: good example of anyone that's getting this product probably doesn't
Speaker 1: have to worry about getting laid that. Just go ahead
Speaker 1: and takes that off your show. Because after all, I
Speaker 1: guess since you mentioned the name of this company being
Speaker 1: abbreviated to fuck, I guess that makes Alex Jones fuck.
Speaker 4: Uh So, Scott, Okay, now go ahead. I was just
Speaker 4: gonna say I need to recover from that pun there,
Speaker 4: but you can go ahead.
Speaker 1: Now. How do you think this story high likes the
Speaker 1: parallels between Info Wars and the Onion as competitors.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, I mean that's the thing, that's the that's
Speaker 4: the ironic thing here. First of all, I really love
Speaker 4: this story. It made me smile. I mean, we're kind
Speaker 4: of in dark times right now, and it feels really
Speaker 4: good to smile. And I do have to admit a
Speaker 4: not small amount of schadenfreud to hear and so I
Speaker 4: indulged myself and let myself.
Speaker 5: Have a little giggle about that.
Speaker 4: But it's especially funny when you realize that they are,
Speaker 4: in fact, they were at least competitors in some ways
Speaker 4: intentional but in some ways unintentional all of the stuff
Speaker 4: that was coming out of Info Wars. You know, he
Speaker 4: did eventually admit that it was an entertainment site, right,
Speaker 4: that he wasn't intending to present news items, and be
Speaker 4: he didn't want to be held to any kind of
Speaker 4: standard of truth, I would imagine, so he kind of
Speaker 4: had to play this role of being competitors. And then
Speaker 4: now they end up just say, okay, well we'll just
Speaker 4: we'll take that, we'll buy that off of you, and
Speaker 4: now you'll be gone and go on your merry way,
Speaker 4: and then you know, then we'll we'll have a bigger
Speaker 4: market share. I suppose I loved the irony. I love
Speaker 4: the irony. And it's just like a layered threat that's
Speaker 4: an onion joke. There a layered treat that just keeps
Speaker 4: on giving, keeps on giving. It's a meta irony, and
Speaker 4: that's my favorite kind of irony. It's irony about irony
Speaker 4: and so well played kudos to the Onion nice job there.
Speaker 1: I had initially read that when the CEO found out
Speaker 1: that the company was going to be available, he was
Speaker 1: pretty much on the viewpoint of this is too good
Speaker 1: to pass up. There's this is this is a story
Speaker 1: in itself that just buying it creates all on its own,
Speaker 1: And I agree, But there is a more serious side
Speaker 1: to this. And Stephen going over to you, how does
Speaker 1: the financial outcome impact of the Sandy Hook families as
Speaker 1: a symbolic justice, even if it's incomplete. Do you think
Speaker 1: that they see a certain level of justice and the
Speaker 1: fact that not only did they bankrupt him, but that
Speaker 1: some something that he would want to put as the
Speaker 1: boogeyman under the bed is actually becoming his reality.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, like that's it's like, yeah, the fact that
Speaker 2: the Sandy Hook victims were instrumental in making this deal happen.
Speaker 2: For anyone who's not up on all the details. There
Speaker 2: there were two bids for the company. One was by
Speaker 2: the Onions Company and the other one was by Alex
Speaker 2: Jones's other company. Alex Jones's other Company's bid was higher,
Speaker 2: but the fact that the Sandy Hook families, a portion
Speaker 2: of them, were supporting the Onion and said that if
Speaker 2: the Onions deal goes through, then we will relinquish any
Speaker 2: what's coming to us of Jones's lawsuit woes skyrocketed the
Speaker 2: value of the bid, even if it wasn't necessarily in
Speaker 2: the form of cold hard cash, that would have gone
Speaker 2: to a bunch of other companies before Sandy Hook parents
Speaker 2: would have gotten it. I think the fact that that, like, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's it's unfortunate that those Sandy Hook parents wouldn't get
Speaker 2: what the court has deemed do them. But one like
Speaker 2: what there is no price that you can pay in
Speaker 2: order to compensate for the loss of your children, and
Speaker 2: then to have wall wars like this like Alex Jones
Speaker 2: benefiting from the death of their children and then the
Speaker 2: harassment that they received on top of that because of
Speaker 2: Alex Jones, Like, there's no dollar sign that's going to compense, say,
Speaker 2: for all of that. So in one sense, it is
Speaker 2: sad that they don't get any money now because of this,
Speaker 2: But at the same time, it's almost as if they
Speaker 2: because there wasn't going to be a dollar sign significant
Speaker 2: enough or that could ever compensate them. It's meaningful. I
Speaker 2: hope that because of what they've gone through, hopefully they've
Speaker 2: been able to like pull the plug, pull the drain
Speaker 2: on the cesspool that Alex Jones bathes in, and you know,
Speaker 2: just drain him of any power hopefully down the road.
Speaker 2: And that even though they won't get, you know, that
Speaker 2: financial compensation, that at least they can make a difference
Speaker 2: in preventing harm like this from happening to other people
Speaker 2: down the road.
Speaker 1: Yes, And one of those things being that sometimes we
Speaker 1: see companies or people getting away with certain bad behaviors
Speaker 1: over and over again. And he did this for a
Speaker 1: very long time, and seeing that come around, it's fortunate
Speaker 1: because it should serve as a reminder of the other people.
Speaker 1: And that switches over to AJ. I know he started
Speaker 1: out on radio and then he went on to his
Speaker 1: on self run misinformation Empire. What do you think that
Speaker 1: says about on check platforms like this? And do you
Speaker 1: think that this downfall of them forwards could serve as
Speaker 1: a warning to others who are spreading dangerous information because
Speaker 1: we hear that every day.
Speaker 3: I struggle with this because I believe that censorship is
Speaker 3: not the solution to the spread of hate. I feel
Speaker 3: like information, more information, and more education, and you know,
Speaker 3: being able to analyze your biases and your beliefs is
Speaker 3: a better solution than censorship. But this case, those show
Speaker 3: the harm that this type of un check platforms, like
Speaker 3: you said, has. So let's go back a little bit.
Speaker 3: Alex Jones started in FORO Wards in the nineties after
Speaker 3: he was fired from a radio show because his extreme
Speaker 3: viewpoints made it hard for the radio station to get sponsors.
Speaker 3: So this goes to show Okay, yeah, like his said,
Speaker 3: yeas were always extreme, So we wanted to create his
Speaker 3: own broadcast where he was free to spread any kind
Speaker 3: of misinformation as far as he could manage. And unfortunately
Speaker 3: this was fire and white and his false conspiracy theories
Speaker 3: have accumulated him quite a fortune. So there are a
Speaker 3: lot of people that support that type of misinformation that
Speaker 3: he's sharing. As far as warning to, you know, those
Speaker 3: who spread that misinformation, I would hope that this does
Speaker 3: give them some kind of idea on what could happen
Speaker 3: to them, because I don't know if we can even
Speaker 3: call what Alex Jones spread information, you know, I don't
Speaker 3: think we can. What he spread was frighteningly dangerous, is
Speaker 3: you know, as you mentioned, one of the most disgusting
Speaker 3: conspiracies that he has spread came at the expense of
Speaker 3: the families of the Sandy Hook victims. He claimed that
Speaker 3: the whole thing was fake. He called the shooting a hoax.
Speaker 3: He say that it was an effort to increase gun control,
Speaker 3: and he went as far as to say that the
Speaker 3: parents were actors and that the children never existed. And
Speaker 3: the problem here isn't just the claims alone, but the
Speaker 3: response of his followers, like the people that listened to
Speaker 3: and believe his livees act upon those lives, and in
Speaker 3: this case, the harassment threatened the families of the Sandy
Speaker 3: Hook victims. There were dead threeads. There was even somebody
Speaker 3: shot at one of the family's cars, one of another
Speaker 3: one of the victims parents say that this conspiracy theories
Speaker 3: urinated on his seven year old son's quay and threatened
Speaker 3: to dig up the coffin to confirm that there was
Speaker 3: a child in it. How disgusting do you.
Speaker 2: Have to be? So?
Speaker 3: I mean, you have to hope that if people learn
Speaker 3: anything from this, is that spreading misinformation and its avengers.
Speaker 1: I definitely am not a fan of limiting information, and
Speaker 1: I get where you're coming from. There that certain level
Speaker 1: of ill at ease with something that feels like a restriction.
Speaker 1: But really we're talking about platforming. Do we want to
Speaker 1: give someone the ability to platform as a bully? I mean,
Speaker 1: because literally what he did is not only was he
Speaker 1: a bully, but as your examples pointed out, is he
Speaker 1: encouraged the worst in other people who already have those tendencies.
Speaker 1: He encouraged him to do those behaviors because look, these
Speaker 1: parents lost their kids and there's there's nothing that any
Speaker 1: of us is going to say or anyone in the
Speaker 1: world is going to ever fix that or make that better.
Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean that that gives somebody like him
Speaker 1: an opportunity to take a shit on him, because that's
Speaker 1: what he did. That's why people did the behaviors you mentioned.
Speaker 1: But switching over to you, Scott, I did find a
Speaker 1: level of amusement about this situation, even from people who
Speaker 1: tend to be a little on the right. There was
Speaker 1: a certain level of amusement at finding the onion and
Speaker 1: taking info wars over. So what do you think that
Speaker 1: this loss of his empire and everyone finding this funny?
Speaker 1: What do you think this says about his reputation? And
Speaker 1: could his attempt to work around it and keep it,
Speaker 1: do you think that could further make him look even worse?
Speaker 4: Well, first of all, you were talking aj you were
Speaker 4: talking about censorship, and I think it's worth pointing out
Speaker 4: that stopping misinformation actually encourages the flow of good information,
Speaker 4: and so this isn't necessarily a censorship situation stopping somebody
Speaker 4: from passing on horrible and harmful and damaging and hurtful misinformation.
Speaker 4: And now I've totally distracted myself away from your question, Infidel,
Speaker 4: Can you give me a quick five word version of it.
Speaker 1: Do you think his attempt to work around this bid
Speaker 1: and try to still fight to go the distance if
Speaker 1: I can still alive from cake, do you think that
Speaker 1: that just will even make him look even worse the
Speaker 1: way he's.
Speaker 4: A yeah, yeah, well of course, I mean it's clear
Speaker 4: what's happening here. And there's a little quote from the
Speaker 4: article I read here. It says, and we've already talked
Speaker 4: a little bit about it. A company affiliated with Jones
Speaker 4: First United American Companies, which sells dietary supplements, lost its
Speaker 4: bid for the fire Right Network last week, underbidding the Onion,
Speaker 4: which went on to claim in for Wars as its own.
Speaker 4: But the saga hasn't ended there, okay. In an attempt
Speaker 4: to recoup the lost bid, Flock accused the bankruptcy trustee
Speaker 4: overseeing the auction of colluding with the satirical news site
Speaker 4: as well as families of the victims of the Sandy
Speaker 4: Hook massacre to pass over the group's three point five
Speaker 4: million bid. So he's just adding fuel to the fire there,
Speaker 4: he's just making it worse. Not only did he accuse
Speaker 4: these families of being deceptive in the loss of their children,
Speaker 4: which is like the most terrifying, most horrifying, most painful
Speaker 4: moment of these families' lives, and he just had to
Speaker 4: rub salt in it.
Speaker 5: Now he's adding things. Now, he's adding fuel to that.
Speaker 4: He's saying, now they're in addition to that, they're colluding
Speaker 4: with the trustee, the bankruptcy trustee, to manipulate the sale.
Speaker 4: And so with no evidence, by the way, I should
Speaker 4: point out there there hasn't been any evidence that any
Speaker 4: of that was true. In fact, the trustee of themselves
Speaker 4: talked about that.
Speaker 5: They released a.
Speaker 4: Statement saying this is a ridiculous claim that there's been
Speaker 4: no collusion at all. There's no evidence at all of
Speaker 4: any of this happening, and I think it really is.
Speaker 5: You know, I would say it's making him.
Speaker 4: Look worse, but he already looked pretty damn bad, and
Speaker 4: so you know, at this point he might be thinking
Speaker 4: that he has nothing to lose, and so adding this
Speaker 4: isn't necessary. I don't think it's going to harm his
Speaker 4: reputation anymore, because I think his reputation is all to.
Speaker 5: The people who don't like him.
Speaker 4: His reputation is already in the gutter, and the people
Speaker 4: who do like him, they're not going to be listening to,
Speaker 4: you know, to facts anyway, and so it does add
Speaker 4: a nice, little delicious layer to all those to that
Speaker 4: irony there. I'm happy that the you know, AJ was
Speaker 4: saying that the families gave up some of their share
Speaker 4: of their take of what was coming into them, and
Speaker 4: you know, we might think of that as being unfortunate,
Speaker 4: but I hope that they got at least some satisfaction
Speaker 4: knowing that they could take an active part in taking
Speaker 4: this man's this man's business down and taking at least
Speaker 4: this source of misinformation out of the system.
Speaker 3: And I think whatever the onion turns info wars into
Speaker 3: is going to be payment enough for the families?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm sure it's going to be glorious.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, when Scott said something about there was no evidence
Speaker 1: for what he was claiming, I'm like, if I'd have
Speaker 1: been eaten, how to spit out my dog at that point.
Speaker 1: But it's just one of those things that we know
Speaker 1: that we can count on him to make things up. Now, Steven,
Speaker 1: I wanted to start. I'm going to ask all of
Speaker 1: you this, but I want to kind of get everyone's opinion. Also,
Speaker 1: go ahead and throw anything else you thought might be important.
Speaker 1: But do you think that this info world's model of
Speaker 1: profit through outrage and pseudoscience? You know we've seen it
Speaker 1: influence other people, But do you think we're going to
Speaker 1: continue to see this type of behavior and other people
Speaker 1: try to perpetrate the same thing.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes yes, if it works, if it works,
Speaker 2: if you make a buck, like, there's just that that mindset.
Speaker 2: There is that kind of person who believes that if
Speaker 2: you can do it, then it is ethical for you
Speaker 2: to do it. If you can exploit a loophole, if
Speaker 2: you can exploit a person, well it's therefore for being dumb.
Speaker 2: So give me your money, you are too stupid to
Speaker 2: have that money, and I am entitled to whatever I
Speaker 2: can take, whatever I can get, So absolutely, the only
Speaker 2: way that we'll ever be able to grow beyond this
Speaker 2: is through education, and only by only by educating people
Speaker 2: and teaching them how to use their brains will we
Speaker 2: ever hope to get free of some of this myer.
Speaker 2: And we're never going to be free of it. It's
Speaker 2: always going to be here with us. There will always
Speaker 2: be people who are exploitable, and there will always be
Speaker 2: the people willing to exploit them. We just have to
Speaker 2: develop systems to try to mitigate it that as much
Speaker 2: as possible, and to try to protect the people that
Speaker 2: we can.
Speaker 3: We already have some of those big fish out there,
Speaker 3: similar to InfoWars, you know, Joe Robe and undertakes can
Speaker 3: help in all of these other platformed people that are
Speaker 3: spreading all of this anti scientific information, information, misinformation, misinformation.
Speaker 5: My bad.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think I think there's little to no chance
Speaker 4: that we won't be seeing this again. I mean demand
Speaker 4: made of multi what is a multimillion dollar business out
Speaker 4: of essentially a microphone and some listeners, and so it
Speaker 4: can be done, Like Stephen was saying, if it can
Speaker 4: be done. It's going to be done. And so there
Speaker 4: are people that have no problem making money off of
Speaker 4: the pain and suffering of others that have no problem
Speaker 4: that make money off of misinformation about fear mongering, about
Speaker 4: conspiracy theory promotion. And so as long as there are
Speaker 4: people that are going to be lapping that stuff up
Speaker 4: and buying those supplements and buying those products and buying
Speaker 4: those buckets of doomsday food, and you know, whatever it
Speaker 4: is that's being sold, there's going to be a market
Speaker 4: for it. And as long as there's a market for it,
Speaker 4: there's going to be people that, as Steven said, are
Speaker 4: willing to rake in that money. So it's nice to
Speaker 4: see this particular Goliath go down to borrow a phrase,
Speaker 4: but there's going to be more popping up, and so
Speaker 4: you know, we should probably get used to it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I think that you're all right. I have
Speaker 1: to say, though, if nothing else came out of this story, though,
Speaker 1: at least I know when I'm buying Scott and Stephen
Speaker 1: for Christmas. AJ told me about a nice product here earlier.
Speaker 1: So right, thank you, thanks, Thanks
Speaker 4: Now,