Winning The InfoWars
The Onion has been attempting to acquire Alex Jones’ InfoWars for more than a year, but repeated legal challenges have kept the deal tied up in court. Rather than wait for the process to play out, the satirical outlet launched its own parody version of the conspiracy platform last week, complete with livestreams, fake supplements, and merchandise benefiting the families of the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre. With the legal battle over the actual InfoWars assets still unresolved, The Onion chief executive Ben Collins is pressing ahead anyway, arguing the notorious media brand is too important to simply leave behind.
While the project is rooted in satirizing Jones’ outrage-fueled media empire, it also represents an ambitious expansion for The Onion. Collins believes one of the internet’s most toxic brands can be repurposed into a sustainable comedy business while raising money for the Sandy Hook families and investing in expanding their comedy content.
I spoke with Collins about the legal limbo surrounding the acquisition, why he refused to abandon the effort, what he’s learned from Jones’ audience-building playbook, and whether InfoWars can ultimately evolve into something that outlives the man who built it.
Below is the Q&A, lightly edited for style.
The Onion has been trying to acquire the InfoWars brand for more than a year. What made you stick with it despite the repeated legal setbacks and delays?
It felt like giving up was the default mode in media in the last two years. And, look, I like to zag. Everybody else appeared to be giving up on unequivocal good causes, refusing to fight, and completely losing their sense of humor and composure. No better zag than to keep going through all of this bullshit.
In short, it was the right thing to do, and InfoWars has been the premier property of evil media bullshit over the last decade. We’d be stupid not to keep going.
We put out a survey to people who subscribe to The Onion, for example. It’s over 81,000 people today, the fourth or fifth largest newspaper in the United States. So many of the responses just said, “Keep going. Keep fighting this specific fight.” So we’re going to do what our readers want. And they are right: The untapped vein of making fun of these people has been a pretty joyous opportunity for us, our subscribers, and the world.
Can you explain where the acquisition stands legally now and speak to the decision to launch a parody of InfoWars without full control over the website?
Yeah, it’s a pain in the ass. Basically, Alex has spent the last four-plus years moving around his assets, trying to declare InfoWars a dead property so he can buy all of his stuff back from his landlord for pennies on the dollar. If we didn’t step in repeatedly, he would’ve gotten away with it.
At present, there’s an emergency stay in a Texas court that prevents the court-appointed receiver from selling InfoWars’ assets. Emergency stays usually last days or weeks. This one has lasted 11 months. Read into that how you will.
That’s why we stepped in and signed a deal with the receiver — whose job is to do what’s best for the families and keep the InfoWars property alive — to lease the InfoWars IP and studio until the emergency stay ended. The estate ran out of cash and couldn’t pay rent, which allowed Alex to hold basically a funeral for InfoWars and strip the building of a bunch of stuff, also illegally.
The night before our lease deal was set to be approved, an appeals court took another extraordinary step and applied an emergency stay to any activity at all before the lower court could even hear it. Now, in an unprecedented situation, this receiver can’t do anything at all with this estate he’s legally required to manage. He’s been boxed into a Schroedinger’s legal box. So, of course, that’s when Alex took advantage, holding that on-air funeral for InfoWars, declaring it dead. This is all despite still using the InfoWars Twitter account, which he legally should no longer have access to, because he is juiceless without the name.
So we’re parodying the InfoWars universe, in part to remind people that this is an ongoing concern, and in part to raise money for the Sandy Hook families. We raised over $100,000 in rainbow merch in the first month since our lease deal was announced, which will go 100% to the families.
Importantly, Alex is protesting a $50 million judgment in Texas, which is allowing for this delay. He owes $1.4 billion in total to other families in Connecticut, so this is all inevitable. He’s just delaying it, using whatever stall tactic he has.
Whenever this stay ends, we’ll purchase the website and studio, and dole out even more cash to the Sandy Hook families, who have been unbelievable advocates throughout this whole thing.
You’ve framed this as a project centered on the Sandy Hook families, but it’s also a significant expansion of The Onion’s ambitions as a media company. Do you envision this becoming a lasting brand beyond parodying Alex Jones?
Definitely yes. We launched with a livestream on Thursday night at 8 p.m., the old-fashioned comedy block time, and it blew up. We trended on Threads and Bluesky. Our brand InfoWars’ new accounts got hundreds of thousands of new followers across every social network, including Instagram and TikTok, within a day. There’s something here. People want a communal experience. People want comedy that isn’t a bunch of weird lookin’ white dudes roasting minorities. They are desperate for it.
We’re continuing those livestreams throughout the summer as we build out a roster of young comedians who got, frankly, fucked by the last five years of weird studio behavior. Anybody who didn’t have a pilot with a thinly veiled racial slur in it that subtly complimented how great our oligarchs are got completely boned. We’re gonna give them a little money to pay rent and build some series out of them.
Invariably, we’ll turn this into something you can pay for — a streaming service, maybe an event or ten, maybe some spinoff shows and books featuring the InfoWars Elf — but we’re focusing on building up this gigantic front porch for now. We want everybody to hang out with us on Thursday nights, then all across social media the rest of the week.
Alex Jones has popped like a balloon, and we have to find out how. Next week, we’ll learn more from several InfoWars callers, including a certain HHS Secretary.
We’re having way too much fun with this, and thankfully it’s been good for the families, the world, and even our business. We’d be nuts to stop.
InfoWars had a significant following because of Jones’ approach of generating outrage and fear. Are there elements of that playbook that you think can be repurposed for comedy without replicating the harm?
Oh my god, of course. For example, we were banned from Threads all 4th of July. I spent the day threatening Meta management with a Congressional investigation for silencing conservatives on social media. We were back up within a few hours. They spent the last ten years rigging the game in an effort to get an oligarchic white ethnostate while every decent person I know begged them to stop hitting us. That time is over with.
Have you heard anything from Alex Jones since launching the parody?
Not from Alex, but his son Rex (don’t worry, he’s like 30) said “It’s yours now” on social media, while complaining that we made a bad business decision. He’s right about the first thing and couldn’t be more wrong about the second thing. Gotta give him credit: being 50-percent correct on anything is a huge improvement for the Jones empire.
Have there been any threats or concerning messages coming from original InfoWars fans? What has been the reaction from Alex Jones’ fanbase, generally speaking?
Kind of, but the way we’ve done this has rendered him weird, shirtless, nude, and mad. The reality is he’s moved all of his money around and he’s scared to get caught doing that, so he’s in a bit of pickle. When Alex started attacking old Adult Swim sketches from Tim Heidecker and calling him a pedophile, even his fans were like, “dude, this is clearly a comedy sketch. Is this how you usually get your information?”
It’s gone better than we anticipated. But he’s still trying to evade justice, selling knives and pills from his new website, pretending like InfoWars never existed — except for his algorithmically goosed Twitter account, which, again, he still uses. It’s a perversion of justice, obviously, and some of his fans have started to realize that.
Can you speak to how much money has been pledged to the Sandy Hook families so far? How are you bringing in money for the project without access to the InfoWars website?
Absolutely. We gave 100% of the merch cut from the first set of InfoWars rainbow merch to the families. We’re gonna keep going with a sizable cut we all agree upon whenever this receiver is allowed to do something. The families simply don’t care about money, but I care about getting them money, so we’re getting them some.
We plan on buying InfoWars’ website and studio outright the second this stay is lifted. The lease deal is in place, and we’d like to get that inked along with a purchase agreement as soon as possible. Then we’ll sell the stuff in the studio on behalf of the families. It’s really the only way they’re going to get paid and get justice, and that’s what they want.
Also, can I just take a step back and talk about how strong these families are? They are American heroes. We make dumb jokes about people exploding like they took an experimental candy in the Wonka Factory. They have been steadfast, smart, kind, and perseverant for about a decade in this fight. They didn’t have to do this. The least we can do is finish this sucker off and build a very funny thing in its place.
What do you envision true success looking like for The Onion’s takeover of InfoWars?
Total world domination. No frog left straight.
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