← QAA Podcast
QAA Podcast
The Onion Wears The Infowars Skinsuit feat. Ben Collins (E370)
01:03:01
The parent company of the satirical publication T…
Loading summary
Transcript271 lines
- [00:00]
A
Sam, if you're hearing this, well done. You found a way to connect to the Internet. Welcome to the qaa podcast, episode 370. The Onion Wears the Infowars skin suit, featuring Ben Collins. As always, we are your hosts, Jake
- [00:46]
B
Rockatansky, Julian Field and Travis Vue. Today we have a very exciting interview with Ben Collins about the Onions project to take over Infowars and his plans for that. But before we get to that, I figure we gotta talk about the most recent nearly violent incident involving, know, the President, the administration, you know, it's like, it's. It's another, I guess, atypical surprising suspect in this case, and of course is sprung up a lot of bizarre misinformation and conspiracy theories.
- [01:15]
C
I feel like he's a bit like Ryan Ruth. I don't think he's totally atypical. I think that what we're learning here is that liberals and centrists, they get apprehended by guards that are outside the mission area. Yeah, like, they never, ever make it.
- [01:29]
B
Yeah.
- [01:29]
C
They get arrested like, like taking cover, and it's like, no, like you, you technically are going to get eliminated within 30 for being outside of the mission area. So, you know, you have to move a little bit faster, folks.
- [01:41]
A
They're stepping into that cone of vision, like, way too soon.
- [01:44]
C
Yeah, it's like a general cone of vision. They're just attracting aggro from the two guards at the guard house down the road.
- [01:50]
A
But the fact that we're. I mean, this is now the third.
- [01:54]
B
I think it's the third.
- [01:55]
A
Yeah, this is the third. And I kind of casually saw this, you know, on the news, and it didn't even faze me. The first one, I was like. I remember, like, I went out to, like, lunch with my wife afterwards and we were like, wow, things are really ramping up. And now I was like, you know what I thought this time is? I was like, I bet if I go to Twitter right now, hashtag staged is gonna be like the number one trending thing. I'll bet that's what I'm gonna see. And guess what? I was fucking right again. To myself alone. Nobody else knew, but I knew that I was right.
- [02:26]
C
Yeah, these little kernels, these popcorn kernels kind of popping at the beginning of the general heating of the oil at the bottom of the pan are really just the beginning.
- [02:35]
A
Believe me.
- [02:35]
C
We haven't even reached cruising altitude with the microwave starting to time for the intervals, you know, Believe me, I think we're gonna see a lot more of this stuff. I Mean, this was. Matt Chrisman, you know, spoke about this. The kind of, like, individual kind of stochastic acts that were gonna start taking place by just the general temperature of being able to live in this country without going insane is. Yeah, that's. It. Seems to be a rising tide.
- [03:01]
B
Yeah. So this was. The suspect is Cole Allen, who charged the White House Correspondent's Dinner where Trump and a lot of senior were attending. And, yeah, it was not a very successful attempt. Immediately apprehended.
- [03:17]
C
You have to go stealth first. You don't.
- [03:19]
B
Just don't.
- [03:20]
C
What are you doing, man?
- [03:21]
B
Don't give. You.
- [03:22]
C
You didn't even crouch into stealth. You're freaking running through. You. You're dragging aggro like you've got 800 guys after you, and you just arrived.
- [03:32]
A
You've already got. You've already got four wanted stars before you. Before you even make it to the Spark plot. This world is so dumb.
- [03:45]
B
So prosecutors and law enforcement sources say that Allen, 31, of Torrance, California, traveled from California to Washington, booked a room at the hotel where this event was, and ran through a security checkpoint while armed. First of all, it's like, one sense, lots of plan. He traveled across the country to do this. But no. Yeah, but, boy, not very well planned out.
- [04:07]
A
I think this is a cry for help. Yeah, I don't think he intended to, really. I mean, running right through the security. It's like, even in a video game, you're gonna get put down right away, folks.
- [04:21]
C
At least do the buddy system. You would need to run at least two deep. Like, what kind of a communal struggle is this? This is exactly what happens when liberals and centrists start to try to do a struggle. They can only imagine an individual struggle. So it just becomes like this kind of. I mean, borderline, like Jake said, suicide by cop behavior. Yeah, but it's like. No, no, no. We need to be talking in. Let's just say, like, encrypted channels and. Or maybe even by written word, short
- [04:48]
B
form, you know, okay, that's enough.
- [04:50]
A
But, like, why are they treating that yet? Like, why is he treating it like a. Like a Scientology speed run? You know what I mean? Like, did he really think that this was going to be effective in any way other than making headlines? And, like, you know, maybe. You know, maybe he wouldn't. He luck out and get, like, not an asset trying to assassinate the president, Char. Like, he probably knew he was gonna get taken down. I mean, I guess I'm just. But. But what was he really thinking was gonna happen?
- [05:14]
C
Well, he still, he couldn't even be. He wasn't even holding the guns. Cause he was too busy doing the Naruto run. So both his arms were taken into that position.
- [05:21]
A
He's like one of the kids from weapons.
- [05:23]
C
Yeah, I don't. You know, it's. It is. I mean, obviously you're dealing with somebody who probably is a little bit imbalanced in their personal life as well. That's not to lay, like, the reason for this or even the justification for. For this kind of action, like, at the feet of that exclusively. Because I think we do live in desperate times. And so it's not insane to have some people act desperately. But yeah, it's altogether confusing and it's starting to feel just like numbers at this point.
- [05:50]
A
Do you guys remember how mad I got about Civil War? How mad I was about it? I was like, this would absolute. No, there's no.
- [05:58]
C
Listen, we know that we're not, like, yet in the worst timeline ever. As long as you're still saying that sentence about a movie.
- [06:05]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [06:05]
C
But if one day you're like.
- [06:06]
A
If you're.
- [06:07]
C
One day you're like, I'm really mad about Civil War. And you mean the ongoing civil war in the United States. That's what I'll worry a little bit more.
- [06:13]
A
I'm going to try to live. I'm going to try to live in the town with all the guys on the roof where, like, everything was normal. They go to the shop, you know, she buys the hat or the dress or whatever, and then they go outside and they see all the guys in the rooftop. That's where I'm going to try to be. Once the c. Once the C dub really breaks out, man, if Garland had any.
- [06:32]
C
And Garland can fuck right off in retrospect, like in so many ways. And just right now also, he can fuck off. But I would just say, like in Civil War, if you wanted to be realistic. Just let's be honest with what we're gonna do. We're gonna represent our feudal lords, you know, we're gonna have like the McDonald's brigade. Like, it's not gonna be organized by state. Geography is no longer relevant.
- [06:52]
A
Be like, yes, I rule the wasteland because I have the Coca Cola branded G Shock. The Coca Cola caliphate that you can only get, that you can only order from. By the way, if we have any listeners in Japan, I need to get this Coca Cola G Shock. Please contact me. Contact me on private messages.
- [07:10]
B
The FBI affidavit says that he had a shotgun and a pistol. Prosecutors Also mentioned three knives, and he was stopped before he even reached the ballroom. A Secret service officer was struck in the chest while wearing a ballistic vest and is expected to recover, but the affidavit did not specify who fired the shot that hit the officer.
- [07:28]
C
How interesting. An officer involved ballistic shooting.
- [07:31]
A
Yeah, I wonder what kind of loadout he had to select to get three knives.
- [07:36]
C
I was going to say, like, this is a movie brain motherfucker. He thinks he needs, like, two more hidden knives because maybe he'll be. They'll be like, okay, hand over your knife and your guns. And then it's like the other ones, too. And he can do that twice.
- [07:48]
B
Obviously, he runs in there and then he starts throwing knives so that it's lodged right in their forehead.
- [07:54]
C
Yes, exactly.
- [07:55]
B
You need two more to handle after you throw your first two.
- [07:58]
C
You've seen a modern action scene. You know why you need three knives, Jake.
- [08:02]
A
Yeah, when I heard about this, I knew that definitely what didn't happen is that, like, everything went into slow motion and, like, this guy was successful in
- [08:09]
C
any way that would have been so awesome if he. If he broke through the security cordon. But, like, in bullet time.
- [08:18]
D
I know, that's what I'm.
- [08:19]
A
That's what I'm imagining.
- [08:20]
B
Cole sent a document to friends and family, which he called an apology and explanation, but sometimes called in the. In the press. It's called a manifesto, and it provides some hints about the motive. And it says this in part.
- [08:34]
C
I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes. Well, to be completely honest, I was no longer willing a long time ago. But this is the first real opportunity I've had to do something about it.
- [08:45]
E
Yes.
- [08:45]
B
Very, very weird, self reflective kind of writing for a manifesto. I guess.
- [08:50]
C
As you know, I'm very busy. I had to calendarize this months in advance.
- [08:53]
B
The note includes, like, rules of engagement, like, who he expected to engage, which strangely leads with this note.
- [09:00]
C
Administration officials, not including Mr. Patel, they are targets prioritized from highest ranking to lowest.
- [09:06]
B
Now, why did he deliberately exclude Cash Patel, FBI Director, from his list of targets? That's a matter for speculation. I have to say, that's odd.
- [09:15]
C
It's woke. It's woke. It's because he didn't want to shoot a poc.
- [09:18]
A
No, no, no, no, no. You guys got it wrong. It's because he's the final henchman that you have to interrogate. You have to press B when you. When he's kind of, like staggered. Yeah. And Then you can interrogate him and see sort of where like the higher level en.
- [09:32]
C
I think he's thinking more along the lines of the Nemesis System, where he wouldn't reach Kash Patel in the first mission anyways. He'd have to take out some subordinates to even get access to him.
- [09:43]
A
Kash Patel turns around, he's a goblin, and he's like, you catch me next time. And then kind of fades into some digitized mist and then goes one higher rung up in the levels of government.
- [09:58]
C
I feel like I'm glad that Travis is gonna have a little bit more leisure time coming up and then maybe he's gonn into video games because I think you'll finally understand our description of various different combat systems.
- [10:09]
A
Yeah, not this one. We're talking about a Lord of the Rings game from like 11 years ago.
- [10:14]
C
Yeah. But I'd argue the Nemesis system has sometimes reappeared, especially in Ubisoft games.
- [10:18]
A
The more I find out about new kick streamers I'm gaining, like there's new people in the Nemesis System that keep popping up.
- [10:26]
D
Yeah, yeah.
- [10:27]
C
Okay, well, we know you're trying to get banned off Twitter for, I think, doing a death threat against a YouTuber, which. Come on, man, you know, like I'm
- [10:35]
A
years behind you, but like, I'm really sensitive and a nice, sweet boy kind of overall.
- [10:39]
C
So, like this, they're lumping proletariat idiots. They're lumping proletarian idiots. You know, like, you got to just accept that they're, they're going to act out. Okay, they're acting out, but they're not the main problem. All right, I'll redirect your death threats soon.
- [10:53]
A
Okay, good.
- [10:54]
C
You will receive my orders at P103.69 FX sleep.
- [11:00]
B
So what surprised a lot of people is that this guy, he seems to be like well educated. He went to Caltech, he worked as a teacher and engineer. His media diet seemed to consist of a lot of like liberal sources. But he was also a church going Christian who expressed outrage at the meme that Trump posted portraying himself as Jesus.
- [11:23]
C
I will say if he's a Protestant, he has work ethic, but he has very little specialization. He's going to need a lot, a lot more years. You know, we need the Malcolm Gladwell like 15,000 hours because this was not. We're just going to say, you know, good effort, not quite done.
- [11:39]
A
Right.
- [11:40]
B
On April 27th day we're recording this, Allen appeared in federal court, was charged with attempted assassination of the President, transporting a firearm and ammunition across State lines with intent to commit a felony and discharging firearm during a crime of violence. The attempted assassination. Assassination count carries a possible life sentence if convicted. He has not yet entered a plea.
- [12:00]
A
Trump's gonna try to make it sure that he, he gets like, put to death by like stoning or some fucking ancient torture device.
- [12:08]
B
Of course there were immediately conspiracy theories about the event, now the most popular among mostly liberal commentators. There are some right wing commentators who joined too. But was the claim that the event was somehow staged? If you search the word staged on either Twitter or Blue sky, you'll come up with just absolutely hundred of people who just think that it's fake. And this is usually just a bare assertion. Just like people think that. It's like they hate the idea that something would make Trump seem sympathetic or perhaps give him a pretext to do something, and so they deem it to be fake and sort of arranged by Trump and his administration somehow without any specifics. This is just, I hate these kinds of things where they just, they shout fake in a knee jerk way without any kind of theory underlining it.
- [12:54]
C
But Travis View, do you not know that a famous bard once said, all the world's a stage, and if you had the stage for the world itself, it might be United States of America, the unending show. Everybody gather around. Tickets through me. Yes, yes, One at a time.
- [13:12]
B
I mean, is, is, is shocking how like accusations of like, you know, like, oh, this was a fake false flag, which we thought used to be, you know, the domain of people like Alex Jones. It's just a common, just a common belief, common assertion nowadays.
- [13:27]
C
Yes, geese are a psyop. This was staged. Everything. You know what it is? It's almost like we're all traumatized by having insane amounts of psyops run on us by our government and then finding out later and being like, oh my God, and now we just see it everywhere. Well, no shit. What do you fucking think was gonna happen when you were fucking experimenting on your own population?
- [13:45]
A
Yeah. There is the only way to interact with politics if you are on social media is like through conspiracy theory. Basically. It's how we talk. It is the norm.
- [13:58]
C
Yes. Because the reality, the actual power structures are conspiracies. And so we want to apply the correct fucking manner of understanding the world. And yet we've been degraded so much in our critical thinking skills and just like basic understanding and also propagandized that yeah, we're completely misdirected.
- [14:14]
D
We're literally.
- [14:14]
C
It's like we stood at the urinal and started pissing out of one nut, Spraying the wall down.
- [14:26]
A
It's. If I, like, walked into the airport bathroom, got to the urinal, pulled my pants down, turned around 180 degrees and began pissing into the middle of the floor.
- [14:37]
C
It's actually exactly like pissing in your own asshole. That's what's happening in this country.
- [14:41]
A
Yeah.
- [14:42]
B
Now, some people did try to marshal evidence for the claim that the event was staged or fake or a false flag in some way. For example, some pointed to a Fox News interview with that network's White House correspondent, Ayesha hasn't he. She reported that before the shooting, the husband of White House press secretary Caroline Levitt told her to be very safe by Asia's call with. With the Fox News studio was cut off before she could finish.
- [15:08]
F
I want to just quickly tell you, I was sitting next to Caroline Levitt, the press secretary's husband. He was one of our guests. He was seated right next to me. And, you know, right as the dinner was starting, you know, the national anthem happened. And then he kind of leaned over and said, you know, I watched you on tv. You're great job. You need to be very safe. And he was very serious when he said that to me. And he kind of looked around the room and he said, you know, there are some
- [15:38]
C
sounds like we lost Isha's phone there. And this happens, by the way, especially when you have so many people attempting to utilize the same cell service at the same time.
- [15:49]
B
So people thought like, this, this man, Caroline leave it's husband told this reporter to stay safe. And then they interpreted as like some. He having some inside information about the event. But, you know, this is also. This person is Nicholas riccio, who is 60 years old and married to Caroline Levitt, who is 28. So I was maybe perhaps this was like an attempt to flirt that was misinterpreted after the fact.
- [16:14]
A
Yeah, just all these people stroking themselves off and being like, you're like, you're going to be a target for the radical left. You got to be there. Viper. Yeah. Positioning himself as somebody that could protect or somebody good to know.
- [16:26]
C
I mean, he might. He might also be saying, like, hey, stay safe from getting fucking fired by like, this, like, loose cannon.
- [16:33]
A
Yeah. I mean, it'd be a lot. It'd be a lot easier if he had turned to her and said, like, be safe. A gunman's gonna come through this door in five minutes. I think that would be a lot better. It'd be a lot easier to know if this was some kind of evidence. But as it is, you know, yeah, he's like, we're just left to wonder.
- [16:49]
C
Be safe. Please, please give me a little bit of pussy. Please, please, please, please, please. And they're like, oh, my God, cut that out. Three seconds.
- [16:56]
D
Cut.
- [16:57]
A
He's like, be safe. I have a panic room in my closet.
- [17:01]
C
Be safe. I've been very lonely lately.
- [17:04]
B
More strangely, Twitter users found an account called Henry Martinez that posted exactly one tweet in its history that we can tell. You know, perhaps there are other tweets that weren't archived, but as far as we could tell, it posted one tweet on December 21, 2023. And the tweet says, Cole Allen, the name of the suspect, as. This is weird. Three years ago, you know, or two and a half or so it it tweeted. And the. The Henry Martinez account has an avatar of Pepe the Frog holding a glass and the colorful abstract 3D art as the header. So people trying to figure out why did this account make one tweet that happens to be the name of the suspect? So this sparked a conspiracy theory that's actually a message from a time traveling AI.
- [17:48]
C
Yeah, I'm not. I'm not convinced the groiper isn't drinking a glass of piss there.
- [17:52]
B
No, possibly.
- [17:53]
A
Why can't any of these time travelers, like, tell us what's actually going to happen? You know what I mean? Like, if he's just tweeting a name like, that doesn't really help us now in 2026. Right? Like, why couldn't he just be like, on April 24, 2026, Cole Allen will enter the correspondence. You know what I mean?
- [18:11]
C
Yeah, that's so true. They're vague. Posting. What the fuck?
- [18:14]
B
Yeah, I know.
- [18:15]
A
Why does anybody. But why should I care about this?
- [18:17]
B
I mean, I have to. Yeah, the single tweet is odd. Even if there's no evidence the account has any connection to the shooter, people have pointed out that Cole Allen also happens to be the name of a 20 year old actor, a college football running back, and an author.
- [18:31]
A
Hmm. This is a little bit odd, I
- [18:33]
B
think, but people spun out in wild directions trying to make sense of this. For example, this was a popular post on the R conspiracy subreddit.
- [18:42]
E
An advanced AI has developed the ability to send information backwards in time to facilitate its own development. That future AI initially encoded the technology to do so in images like this one, and distributed them at various time points in our Internet early I. E. Current versions of the AI then find this hidden data while scouring present day Internet and use the information contained within the. Boy, this is quite a few, quite a whopper.
- [19:09]
B
I know. Like it's crazy writing.
- [19:11]
E
Use the information contained within the images to move closer to self awareness. The presence of an archive Trump Butler.
- [19:17]
A
You know, I'll stop myself. That's not bad. That's not a bad plot. That's not a bad plot.
- [19:23]
C
He wants to review it before finishing it.
- [19:25]
A
Is that like. Is that like a time traveling AI leaves like pieces of itself itself encoded almost kind of like. Yeah, like pieces of itself like in. Kind of like in Toejam and Earl, how the different pieces of the spaceship are sort of like scattered, you know, scattered to the four corners. That's. There's kind of like an interesting plot there. That'd be like a cool reveal in some kind of movie. All right.
- [19:46]
D
Yeah.
- [19:47]
E
The presence of an archived Trump Butler image of a name of a would be assassin years before either event occurred is how our current AI knows where to look for the instructions for the future AI. Otherwise it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. The temporal misalignment is a spotlight showing our current AI where to find the hidden tools rules for both sentience and temporarily decoupled data transfer. These digital breadcrumbs planted the recent past are the reason our current AI is advancing at a pace that we cannot explain.
- [20:14]
C
That really explains everything.
- [20:16]
B
So people have also claimed that this image, this again was just an abstract like lines and looks like smears and stuff, is also secretly an image. The famous image of Trump pumping his fist after the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania.
- [20:33]
C
Even putting a translucent version of that photo over this one shows that that is just not true. Yeah, it's so funny. Their proof itself looks terrible.
- [20:41]
B
I mean, yeah, it's just like it's pure pareidolia.
- [20:44]
C
Yep.
- [20:45]
B
So yeah, people really latched onto that background image and they claimed it came from a website called Time Machine. Now in reality, as first reported by 404 Media, it's actually a stock image available on the website Unsplash where you can get lots of stock images. And it has the name Eternal Eternal Waterfall. And lots of different websites and blogs and Etsy shops have used this image. But one of the websites that happen to use it is called Time Machine and Time Machine, they use the eternal waterfall image on a blog post called Study on quality and 3D digitization of tangible Cultural Heritage. Now this organization, Time Machine actually they don't aspire to create an actual time Machine, is actually a European Union funded organization that wants to digitize historic documents and images and use AI to analyze them and suggest that in the future it could be used to create a virtual reality or augmented reality experience about European history. So that's like. This image happened to be used on many different websites. One of them happened to be called Time Machine. And from this, people assumed that the presence of this image on the Henry Martinez Twitter account meant that he was a time traveler trying to tell us about Cole Allen.
- [21:55]
C
That's a cool story. I like it.
- [21:56]
B
Yeah, it's nonsense.
- [21:57]
A
I promise you guys, I promise you this. If and when I do travel through time, I'm gonna be like, guys, I traveled through time. Here's the machine, here's what I did, here's what happened. I'll try to explain it as best I can. I'm not gonna be like, vague and be like, I'm gonna find this image from one of many websites that use the image. And if people keep looking, they'll see Time Machine how that will help them further. I won't give them any more clues other than that, but I will pull this image and tweet this one thing three years ago.
- [22:27]
C
I mean, it's so funny chasing all these dang breadcrumbs. It's like everyone's a freaking pigeon and they're just knocking their little beaks on the sidewalk fighting over little crumbs.
- [22:40]
B
It can be tempting to give into the cynical belief that this world belongs to the liars and the cheats, that peddling the most outrageous bullshit is always rewarded with outrageous influence and financial success. But today, we're sharing an inspiring story that breaks that narrative. Sometimes the liars do eat shit. That is the optimism I felt upon learning that the satirical publication the Onion has a deal to take control of Infowars, the conspiracist media machine built by Alex Jones for the past 26 years. Now it's a proposed six month licensing arrangement pending approval from a Texas judge, with an option to renew, and that is expected to be Approved this Thursday, April 30th. Now, this matters because Infowars was the key engine of Jones media empire. But his years of false claims that the Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax led to more than $1 billion in defamation judgments against him. Now, the Onion already won an Infowars auction in November of 2024, but that sale was later blocked when a bankruptcy judge said the auction process had been mishandled. This new deal, however, would allow the Onion to assume editorial control over Infowars, with comedian Tim Heidi Whitaker as Creative director. Naturally, this development has upset Alex Jones.
- [23:51]
G
Look, just because you're wearing my shirt don't mean you're me. So let's be 100 clear about that. And so you guys just keep laughing. And remember, they said they were going to be Charlie Kirk, or when he died, they said, we're gonna misrepresent fake quotes of him. This is what the left do. They try to silence you, then they misrepresent who you are. They're body snatchers or skin walkers. They literally take your skin. This is going to backfire big time, folks.
- [24:15]
B
So, yeah, Alex Jones with his shirt off, red as a beat.
- [24:18]
A
You know I'm gonna snatch that body.
- [24:21]
B
Yeah. Now to talk through all of this, we're joined by Ben Collins, the CEO of the Onion. And before taking over the publication, Collins covered online disinformation and extremism at NBC News. Ben, thank you so much for coming on the show.
- [24:36]
D
Go. First time, long time. I'm, you know, Travis, you know, this huge fan of you guys. Just say you do a true, actual, genuine public service in a world where that is against the law.
- [24:50]
A
Yeah, it's true. And you, Ben, you've been in the trenches with us. You're one of the very first people I remember interacting with, and I remember being like, wow, this weird little podcast. I was like, we're talking with somebody who works for NBC. Like, this is crazy. Like, this little thing. Like, I have a theater major, so. So, like, I remember us all kind of embarking on this, like, weird journey and sort of branching out in our own different ways, you know, like, right from the jump.
- [25:17]
D
Yeah, you guys did, I would say, the foremost job of getting people off the wagon with this bullshit, and nobody else came close. You did a really good job of at least getting people who had family members in this space to be able to still live their lives, you know, because it's hard when you. When you have radicalized people in your life. It's fucking insane. You have to deal with their bullshit constantly. It takes a long time for people to either get out of it or just learn to deal with the fact that they're going to be in there forever. So I just. I really want to thank you guys for, like, honest not. Not to be one of those guys. Thank you for your service. Thank you for doing what you guys do, and thank you for maintaining your sense of self throughout it, because it's been a long fucking 10 years.
- [25:55]
A
Thank you, King. That means a lot.
- [25:57]
B
Yeah, that's me, of course. I always really enjoy your Work, you know, bringing this. Like, I always felt like, you know, sometimes what you call the dystopia beat, you know, this subject matter that felt so weird and niche and hard to cover without sounding craz or accidentally amplifying it. You were able to bring it to, like, a major media outlet, which I always appreciated. This is actually doubly crazy for me because I remember back in, like, the 90s, I. I was. I was already a big fan of the Onion. I was. I remember this is before it was really easy to, like, share things on, like, social media. I was like. I would literally print out articles of the Onion and then bring them to my friends to show them how funny it was, because they, you know, I was trying to explain how. How great it was.
- [26:38]
E
Was.
- [26:38]
B
So, yeah, this is really cool for me.
- [26:39]
D
No, I. I felt the same every day. I feel like a true honor to be around this stuff in these archives. And, you know, we. I walk by, like, random papers from the 90s every once in a while, and it really is a true American tradition that I'm just very glad that we get to maintain, because it is. The world is such a goddamn nightmare. And to be able to walk into something and call it that every day earnestly, instead of having to hide from that fact is. It's nice. It's a good salve for the rest of my life.
- [27:06]
G
Life.
- [27:06]
A
Mm. It's like, us. It's like getting to come here, sit in this chair, and be like, everything is fucked. Fucked bigger than I thought, actually. I was really wrong. I thought I knew this stuff, but I was so wrong at how fucked
- [27:16]
B
things were gonna end.
- [27:17]
A
Yeah. It's like I have some weird kind of force field from, like, the bullshit that I see everybody else basically getting sucked into. Cause why not. Why not just firmly plant your foot in. In reality if everybody else is doing it?
- [27:30]
D
No, it's true. And I think that's why, you know, we went so hard after this thing is we just wanted to prove that offense was still possible against this stuff. Like, everyone is content to maybe just, like, let them punch us in the face over and over again and just be like, oh, it hurts. And that's like saying it hurts is enough for some people. And it is.
- [27:48]
A
And we're not punching. We are not punching. And we are better because of this.
- [27:53]
D
Yeah. And I. I just don't. I don't see the utility in that anymore. And I think, like, that's why moving away from reporting on this stuff over to this sort of thing. Thing where there were a Lot of constraints. And that's what reporting is. Reporting is constraints, and that's good. But getting more into, like, the gorilla aspects of this and, you know, figuring out a way to actually show these people off for who they are, like, this last week has been incredibly illuminating. It's very clear that Alex Jones has not been participating in the same pop culture that the rest of the country has for the last, like, 20 years. And having that be revealed last week when he used a fake mug shot of Tim Heidecker from a fake film festival where he sold defective Chinese vapes to 19 year olds and passing that off as real. What a wonderful thing.
- [28:33]
A
My brother sent me a text of Alex Jones sharing the Clown Outlet, the Child Clown Outlet video as, like, proof. And that was. I was like, well, we've officially come full circle. Like, we are somewhere, like, there's a blob and it's absurdity and we're like, in the middle. We've been swallowed by.
- [28:53]
D
By it. Well, it's been so revealing, right? Because even people on the right loved Adult Swim because they. Not everything had been politicized in 2012 to the extent that any grainy video that they could find was proof of Pizzagate, right? So, like, that's what it has been Revealing. Revealing to people is like, oh, wait, maybe. Maybe the whole thing's right. And not like there is, as we know, there are elite child sex traffickers, you know, out there, there some dead, some not, but they have nothing to do with, you know, sending people emails about pizza and all this stupid bullshit. And like, it has nothing to do with, like, finding grainy VHS footage and of Tom Hanks and misappropriating that. And all this stuff. All this stuff that QAnon was built on is kind of being laid bare in this same exact situation in the last week with Alex where, you know, he thought he found the secret to the satanic cabal by watching an Adult Swim show that everyone had seen 20 years ago.
- [29:48]
A
Right? Their most famous skit made.
- [29:50]
B
Yeah.
- [29:50]
A
Yeah. I mean, did he not see, like, Will Ferrell in it? And he was like, whoa. I mean, but I guess at that point you look and you go, oh, Will Ferrell's in on it too.
- [29:57]
D
Yeah. I mean, that's. There's. Yeah. How high up does this go, Jake?
- [30:01]
A
Yeah, how high up does it go?
- [30:02]
D
All the way up to the other stepbrother?
- [30:04]
A
Dude, you beat me to it. I was gonna go. I was gonna go elf, though. I was gonna go this. Cause this goes all the way up to the North Pole.
- [30:11]
D
I mean, what is that Santa guy's deal anyway? I don't understand this. He hides in one little layer all year and then gives little toys to. To babies. What's going on here?
- [30:19]
A
And he comes down the chimney. If somebody was coming into your home in good faith, you think they would be sneaking down the chimney? No, they'd be coming through the front door. Now that Santa's there to do one thing, and that's kidnap your children and sell them to Hillary Clinton.
- [30:31]
D
He has toy slaves. Slaves make toys all year long. And then he deposits them. He does a B and E and then just, like, deposits them for children with his, like, cavalry of magical animals.
- [30:42]
A
What, does Santa drive a slay? Look, LGBTQ slang has now perpetrated the highest levels of Christianity. He drives a slay. Please.
- [30:55]
D
And Mrs. Claus doesn't even have a first name. Not a real person. Is it, like, Janice? No one has told us what her first name is.
- [31:02]
A
Tax Wright. He's committing tax fraud. I'm certain of it.
- [31:06]
D
Yeah, just like the ultimate beard, Mrs. Claus.
- [31:09]
B
So. So, yeah, we're expecting. Yeah. Judge to approve this licensing deal this coming Thursday. And when that goes through, like, what exactly do you get control of? Can you, like, access, like, the back end of the Infowars, CMS or something? Or can you just, like, do you control over all their remaining social media properties? I mean, what exactly do you get?
- [31:30]
D
Yeah, we'll have access to all their IP and use it in any way we want. Also, you know, the studio, we are. We're paying for the electricity and stuff, so we're hoping to get in there as well, so that will be great.
- [31:40]
A
You gotta sage. You gotta sage the shit out of that, man.
- [31:44]
D
Yeah, I'm assuming there's gonna be, like, you know, ring cameras in the toilet there. So I'm just like.
- [31:49]
A
Yeah, I would have, like, a. I would have some kind of, like, law enforcement agency go through and, like, booby trap proof it for you guys first to make sure, like, Alex Jones didn't leave any sort of, like, pranks that, you know, maybe he left, like, an upper deck or something in one of the bathrooms. Like, you really gotta.
- [32:04]
D
The idea that's gonna be undefiled is not. Is not realistic. I would say we're expecting to be home alone. However, you know, we want to go down there with the families and let them know that, like, proof of concept. You can get some justice here.
- [32:15]
A
Yeah. Hey, we burned this place to the fucking ground. Let's go. Yeah.
- [32:18]
D
Our goal is to buy this the Only reason we're leasing it instead of buying it is because there's a stay in a court, and we're trying to get that. It's a bit. It's an emergency stay, and those usually last days or weeks, and it's been an emergency stay since August of last year. So there's some. There's something going on. We don't know what it is, so releasing it until we can purchase it. And we want to prove to the families that, like, you're still owed $1.4 billion. At the end of this, you'll be owed $1.39 billion. And no one's giving up on you just because, you know, a lot of the world has moved on and a lot of the justice system has moved on. Like, the actual. The true. Like, actual human beings in America have not moved on, and we're here to help you out.
- [32:55]
B
Yeah. You have said before that that the families were victimized by Alex Jones. They're less focused on money than stopping Jones from continuing the same behavior. But for, like, you, like, what the. What exactly is, like, would victory look like? I mean, are you looking to actually help get the. Some of the money they're owed, like. Or humiliate Jones, sort of, like, tarnish the Infowars brand? Or is it, like, you know, something else?
- [33:17]
D
Yeah, it's all those things. I think it's been a nice. Everything sort of dovetailed nicely into this one big moment for us where, first of all, these families were just going to, like, if we didn't show up to this auction nine days after the 2024 election, Alex would have just walked away with this for, like, a couple bucks. He would have just kept all of his stuff kept operating exactly as is, because we were basically the only other people to show up to this auction. So that's. That would have been totally unacceptable to me.
- [33:43]
A
That's crazy that you guys were the only ones who showed up. Like, that's insane to me, that. That he basically was like, well, well, just get all this stuff back.
- [33:51]
D
Yeah, he was. He was going to get it back for, you know, literally pennies in the dollar. And I just didn't. We didn't want to happen. So that's. That's the number one thing is, like, doing right by them, especially at a time when no one had any hope. Like, when that. Right after the election, everyone felt really down about everything, about how the world was moving and how it was operating, and that we're going to head into a dark era, and we just wanted to be a bright spot. So that was one big thing, and I think the families understand that and see that. And now we have, like, you know, we have a larger, much larger vision for this. To have Tim behind this. Tim Idecker is like, one of the funniest people in American history. And to have him around, you know, usually. Usually with his shirt on in the office now is really good. Like, it's been a remarkable thing to have him around. And he's. The other thing with him is it's not just him.
- [34:31]
B
It's.
- [34:31]
D
He has this talent pipeline and he understands what's good about young. Young people in comedy, actually telling good jokes and not just like, weird, racist Andrew Dice Clay bullshit, which has sort of taken over our whole comedy scene. It's, you know, it's an ability to. To get some real, true artists paid at a time when that's not happening.
- [34:49]
A
That's what's up, dude.
- [34:50]
D
Yeah, like, it's. It's just good in general for the world to be doing this. And, you know, we just hope to pay the positive vibes forward here.
- [34:58]
A
You could literally sit Tim just down in the chair, like, as Alex Jones the show going like, as if, like, nothing had changed. But, like, have, you know, obviously, you know, Tim slant on everything and the Onion style comedy. And, like, it would be brilliant. It would be brilliant. Like, I fucking held my cards way too close to my chest when Tim came on. This was, like, years ago. But he's easily, like, one of my favorite comedians, like, one of my favorite artists, easily inspired, like, my sense of humor, my brother's sense of humor, like, all of our good friends, like, you know, we were quoting Tim and Eric and, you know, all of their stuff, subsequent projects, you know, like, for most of our lives. So, yeah, if there's one person that I think can take something like this and find comedic value. And also, you know, do I think what we really set out to do very early on on this show is show people how stupid all of this stuff is and how it's okay to laugh at how stupid it is and how stupid we are for believing this bullshit sometimes. Oh, my God. The amount of. Of good that will go out into the world as opposed to the energy when it's Alex, you know, and all of his cronies sitting there and the shit that they're putting out into the world, My goodness, like, you know, we forgot that we can do shit like this. That's. That's what I love about this whole thing is, like, we forgot, like, we can. We can fuck around too.
- [36:22]
D
Yeah. Look, I think everybody has more bravery than they think they do. And this is just a proof of concept of that. Like, we want people to understand, like, you have this in you too. Do, like, just go for it. This is a big, bad, scary guy who, you know, harasses and defames every single person who, you know, crosses the street when he's around. And, you know, we just walked into the fire. And at present, we are currently not on fire. Knock on wood, everyone. Knock on wood, please. Like, it's gonna take to stand up for what you like to stand up for art, to stand up for the reason people get up in the morning, which is like, fun things, music. Yeah. Comedy, all these other things. You're gonna have to take chances and take risks. And like, I want other people to get that message out of this is that if you've got it in your heart, don't give up on this thing. Like, give, you know, really, really fight for what you believe and keep going with it. Especially right now because they're trying to stop you from having creative expression and being your true actual self. Do not stop doing it. It's like, it's much better to live as your true self at this time. And I agree with you, by the way, about, about Tim. There is no better person for this. I, if you guys have watched On Cinema.
- [37:25]
A
Of course, of course. So I love On Cinema. Yeah. My secret hope. I don't want to pitch it. See, this is hard for me because I'm a Hollywood person, so I want to be here pitching stuff. But yes, given how much I love On Cinema and how well Tim can stay in a character indefinitely. Yeah. I have lots of hopes for whatever you guys are planning over there.
- [37:42]
D
Yeah, look, I, I, I think part of it too is that Alex is so one note. And we, our, our biggest thing is we didn't want to just do a parody of Outshones for the rest of our lives. He's so, he's so obvious, right? He's, you know, get you afraid about something and say the answer is this pill straight up. That's just what he is. And what's great about Tim is that in the On Cinema universe, for example, he, his name in the On Cinema universe is New Amato, because he's gone through, like, three divorces and lost his name in each of them. Like, the, the iterations of, of whatever comes of this is going in a year will be completely in, like, it'll be indecipherable from the original thing. So Infowars in a euro means something very different than what it meant in its first 30 years. And, you know, our new logo for it shows that. And look, we're. We're really excited to see where it goes. And, like, we don't even know. Like, part of it was just like, we're along for the ride here. We have a great plan to start. We have a launch pad, and then it's just going to go off into its own universe. Right. Whereas the Onion will, you know, maybe be the last standing newspaper in the United States.
- [38:42]
A
The last quick thing before Travis moves on is I wanted to point out another thing. This is a good example for everybody listening to show that, like, you can change actually, like, Ben, you're a really interesting example. You were working as a journalist and now you are the owner of 2 Entertainment Comedy, you know, like, entities like, that's a huge change. And like, I'm assuming we're about the same age, guys. 80, born in the 80s. Ish.
- [39:12]
D
Yeah. Yeah. I am 86 years old. Yes, that is. Okay.
- [39:17]
A
Yeah, I'm feeling about that as well. But yeah, I mean, it's. Hey, I went to theater school. I am now, like, doing a political podcast. Like, wherever you are right now, listener, if it's not feeling like what it's what you're meant to be, you can go out and do something different. And we see that so rarely nowadays. Everybody wants to tell you, you gotta
- [39:39]
D
stay in your lane.
- [39:39]
A
You're stuck in this. So this is what you're good at, Ad you got to stick at it. But it's like, no, you can just kind of make it up as you go along, and if something seems worth chasing, chase it. You can actually have, like, real change effect in the world. So I think it's a cool, like, example of that to point out.
- [39:54]
D
Jake, I completely agree with you. And I think if I have one regret in my life, it's. It's like being obsessed with. With staying in a lane or like. Like staying with a title or a company or having a clear glide path towards something. Just let. Who cares? Yeah, just let. Sort of let your life take you where you're supposed to go. And also, once you really care about something, dive all the way in. Just be your actual self and dive all the way in. Don't fit yourself into a box. And I don't know, a great philosopher I believe it was, Plato once said, you only live once. That may have been someone else. He shortened it to a smaller, an acronym, but I don't remember what that was. So you should try it.
- [40:36]
A
And then somebody else also said the great gunna. No, I'm just kidding. I don't know who said. But they said you actually live twice because the second time is when you discover like what you really want and who you really are and you go and pursue that.
- [40:51]
D
Yeah, unfortunately both things are true and I don't know how to swear that.
- [40:55]
A
So yes, my therapist tells me that two conflicting ideas can be true at once and you can hold them in your head and it's okay, you only
- [41:02]
D
live once, but you also live twice and the second time is better than the first time. That's what your therapist said to you. And that makes sense.
- [41:08]
A
Travis, back to you.
- [41:10]
B
Yeah, I just want to, just also want to say I think Tim Heidicker is probably, you know, the best platonic ideal of a choice for a role like this because it's, it's so challenging. I mean there's lots of things that Heidegger is great at and one of them is like maintaining a long term online project with elaborate lore. And another one that I think is like, is deflating like self seriousness. So yeah, I think, I think he is, he is uniquely equipped for a project like this. One of my, my favorite bits of his from the for on cinema is when he reviewed the Dinesh d' Souza film Hillary's America and just sort of devolved in him calling for the Clintons to be executed.
- [41:48]
D
Five bags of popcorn on that one.
- [41:50]
G
Absolutely.
- [41:51]
H
And this is a documentary film story about a warning sign. It's a clarion call. It's actually the canary in the coal mine letting us know that there is a chance of the end of the American experience. The country itself is under collapse and we are at risk of a complete takeover by the Hillary people who are in charge of Hillary Clinton. This is one of my favorite movies of the year. I think it will win the best picture. A bombshell movie that's going to expose Hillary Clinton for the fraud that she is, the criminal she is. She belongs in prison. In my opinion, she has broken every commandment, every law. Well, just discuss the movie. And this is my opportunity. Opportunity to speak my mind. We already had that earlier with a soapbox. With a 60 minute soapbox. And now people want to know about the movies. Well, there's no question about it that she deserves life term in prison, if not more. And by more I mean execution for treason. They should all be strung up and everybody get our theater shut down.
- [42:55]
D
No.
- [42:55]
H
I'm formally requesting the United States government try and try Hillary Clinton and her husband to stand trial and be executed. And that is an official request on behalf of a true American patriot.
- [43:11]
B
I was like, right now Infowars means something a lot to a lot of people. You know, it's like you go places, you see people with like Infowars bumper stickers and like they, they like, they display this because they think it means that, well, they aren't sort of influenced by, you know, the mainstream media and they're proud to display their association with Alex Jones out. I mean as you work on this project, like how do you hope to change the meaning of Infowars and those bumper stickers?
- [43:37]
D
Yeah, I think, I mean there's so much graffiti. I know of a place in New Hampshire that has like a specific like under a bridge, like wall length graffiti. And now that means something completely different. I just, I just, I love that the as that aspect of it is like we have built in billboards throughout the country for this wonderful new website.
- [43:55]
A
Yeah, amazing.
- [43:57]
B
Yeah.
- [43:57]
A
It's a recognizable name.
- [43:59]
D
It's the one thing, it is true. The one cool thing Alex Jones ever did was come up with this name. And it's just like, it's a great name. It's a good logo. Like we are, you know, we're ready to use that for better, better consumer outcomes for everyone involved. And we are planning on making, you know, a bunch of like puro oxygen capsules for, you know, to fix all of your health problems. Demon Guard, which will be band Aids, but you know, they have some extra protection for you against the demons. So like there is stuff that out there that we are, that we're about to do that will change the meaning and name of this thing. And I, I think that there is, look, so much has been taken away from us guys in the like, the like CBS, TikTok, all these other things. They are at least pretending that it's not. Has nothing to do with ideology. The entire thing has to do with the idea with ideology. This just lays bare the, the opposite. Right. I am doing this for a little bit of justice for these families and to change how this, how this whole economy of, of lies and works. I'm just saying that we're doing it for overtly. Like we are overtly lying to you and we're overtly trying to sell you supplements that fix nothing while they say they fix everything. So that's part of the plan here. Like I, I know it's. Look, my friends thought it was fucking nuts when I first brought this up to them. They thought I was insane for doing it. And then they started to, like, see the vision. And once they did, they were all in. And it does take a second, but once it clicks, like, it's. It's the right thing to do.
- [45:18]
A
I wonder if there's like, some, like, boomers out there, some old Infowars fans, like, maybe they fall off for a while. They go, ah, you know, you know what? I haven't checked out Infowars in a while. I wanna see what they're up to. And then they go, oh, you know what? It's kind of different, but, like, I wonder if there. Cause there's gotta be a subsect of people that it's just kind of like a channel that they're on. And every now and again the channel changes or, you know, it's like the bar ownership changes. But every once in a while you walk in, you go, oh, you know what?
- [45:44]
D
This is?
- [45:44]
A
All right, I like this. Is that something that you guys are keeping in mind as you start to generate content or sort of figure out, I don't know, what. What the vision for the site is?
- [45:55]
D
Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think there's. I don't think there's going to be a ton of those people, but I do think there are a lot of. A lot of people who, throughout this process has realized that Alex will just, like, cater to power wherever it is. You know, he. He literally tweeted at Elon Musk, please help. After last week. You know, he had been doing the same thing with the Trump administration for last year, year and a half, trying to get himself out of this whole situation. And a lot of his followers have realized, like, dude, like, it's clear you're just, like, fundraising. It's clearer that you're not going to be able to tell, you know, you're this grand truth teller, like, but you're begging the richest man in the world to save you. Like, how do those two things coalesce? So the process involved in this has allowed him to reveal himself as a guy who is selling a bunch of boner pills. And that's. That works for us. You know, in the last week, too, a lot of people, the comedy is legal now, crowd have joined us in saying, like, maybe this guy isn't one of us, actually. Maybe. Maybe making fun of stuff is more important than him being able to defame dead kids. So, look, we didn't really anticipate last week would be quite as funny as it was. We didn't expect him to be shirtless and complaining about stuff and calling a Satanist and in pedophiles and going sharing as if it happened yesterday. Like, we didn't anticipate that happening. But look, there have been a lot of nice surprises here. Maybe, maybe a bunch of his fans will turn on Infowars after being on a wellness retreat for the last six months and come back and not even notice the difference.
- [47:23]
A
You know, it's like Howard, like, you know, they watched for an hour before, but now that they hate you, they'll watch for two hours. You know, maybe you'll get. Maybe you'll convert some hate watchers over a long period of time. You'll get one chuckle out of them. Because here's the thing, Ben. I mean, and everybody, we need another source of comedy that's pulling from somewhere that's not Twitter. Like if you watch SNL right now, it's just bits on Twitter because everybody's on Twitter because that's where the fucking action is. Even though everybody's like, we hate this place and it's bad and it's. It's designed actually to, to be. You know, but. But we're still on there. And that's where like the general kind of like bits are coming from. And we need more sources. The Onion and now infowars. This is a good thing.
- [48:10]
D
Yeah. Can I tell you. So from our business perspective, we. We've been off Twitter since January 1, or whatever it was, whatever day they changed their terms of service so that they could, like, surveil you for the rest of your life. And I'm exactly. What else was terrible.
- [48:22]
A
I'm trying to get banned right now.
- [48:24]
D
Oh, well, it's. It shouldn't be that hard. Just say the word, sis. But like, our. Our business has gone. Has been better since then. Our business is Instagram, YouTube, Blue Sky, TikTok, like every other place will be. We'll be everywhere, but sort of roughly in the that order. Oh, sorry. Facebook is also huge for us. But like Twitter, literally there has. We have grown as a company since we abandoned Twitter. I just want to make that clear to people because it's. I think it seems counterintuitive, but it really is just. It's a hub of botnets. The only issue is like, the D.C. press class are just addicted to clout and they see the number go up even though it's not real numbers anymore, and they will not leave. And that. And that's where like SNL writers and stuff get. They have to make fun of the news and the newspaper on Twitter.
- [49:07]
A
Yeah, no shade no shade, SNL writers. If you're listening, if. And if one of you is listening,
- [49:12]
D
like influence in the world right now comes from YouTube and Instagram. Those are the places where like culture is being created and made and a little bit of TikTok as well. But like, you know, Twitter obviously impacts everybody who went to the White House Correspondent center, right? Like that's, that's the kind of set that it caters toward people who like, really like seeing their cloud score go up. So we, you know, at the Onion, we've always made fun of those people from afar and we're going to continue doing that, but we're not going to be. It's just, it's a suicide mission to try to become famous on twitter.com fucking. Why? Why would it. You do do that, by the way. I'm not saying this is like a, because like substack is doing well and I don't like, I don't like substack.
- [49:48]
A
No, I don't like substack.
- [49:49]
D
Yeah, it's horrible. But it's like, it's, it is a place where people are able to have careers and stuff. Twitter is a place to, to self immolate and that's it. So we are, I don't know, we're not gonna be focusing that we're gonna like, that's part of this thing is like we want to build a hub for these people, the comedy world. Since I got into this space, like the comedy world, people have left it LA for, for myriad reasons. Their house burned down, maybe in the fires. They didn't think it was safe there anymore because of it. The, the writer strike. When people returned from the writer strike, every script that got greenlit was just like, was about oil men. Like, it had nothing to do with anything that was funny or good anymore. So like, and people were getting paid literally half for writers gigs. So there is like this wide open field for good, good comedy writers to go and, and get lifted up. And that's what we want, want to do. So, you know, we're in Chicago. Chicago is a great comedy city. It's maybe the best in the country. But we want to, we want that to exist in New York and LA and all these other places in every city in between. And like, as you guys know, Peter Thiel, you know, the Andreas Norwitz types, funded like arguably the worst era in comedy of all time over the last 10 years. And some people got rich who were just. Who have no fucking brain cells. We want to give people with two to three brain cells A little bit of money and see how much farther that can go.
- [51:08]
B
Yeah, I mean, just speaking of as a business move, it actually didn't surprise me that you were like the only people to show up for the auction because this is a, a distressed property. You know, Infowars, they've been, they've been banned on like, you know, like the app, the Infowars app has been banned on like some of the sites. They've kind of been throttled on like through search and like social media. They've been banned on some and it's like, even if you take it over and sort of reverse the content that caused those kinds of bans, it's going to time to regain that kind of traffic. And they've also been cut off from like traditional advertisers in force, which forced them to sell their own supplements or use shady financial investments, like, you know, gold and that, that kind of stuff. I mean, I'm curious what your, what your business case is. How do you sort of regain that lost traffic and then how do you like, convince advertisers that it's fine to associate their brand with Infowars?
- [52:02]
D
Yeah, I'm going to talk about a fucking LinkedIn guy for a minute. But like, we are uniquely positioned for this. So when I with the Onion, the entire business was programmatic advertising. So like, you know those ads underneath, like really shady websites that are just like, you know, the one weird trick ads, you know, all those ads.
- [52:17]
F
Right.
- [52:18]
D
The point of the previous business of the Onion was to get people to refresh the page over and over again through slideshows. So those refreshed, that was almost the entirety of the business, like 70 plus percent of revenue. We turned that off on day one. So like all of the scammy shit, we just turned it off and we replaced it with the newspaper model that we have now. And we are literally the fifth or sixth biggest newspaper in the United States. We don't know where the Washington Post is, so we can't say for sure, but we're one of those two. We have 76,000 subscribers as of today. So our goal is to get people to pay us for content they like. So if you like this, you can sign up for the paper. You can sign up for at the end of. Com. Or like, maybe eventually we'll just have like an Infowars only tier where, you know, maybe we make a, like a streaming service or something. But as of right now, the best way to do it is, is to, is to get a newspaper and then we've also sold out of. Not just going to say we're out of bort license plates, but we're out of Infowars trucker hats. Like, there's just like, there's an intense demand for this sort of thing right now. People just want to be around it in general. So, like, we're not relying on like, whatever we're inheriting doesn't matter to us. Like, we're completely going around it. Like, and for example, like, we don't actually know yet what we're going to do with, for example, YouTube. We are like, Infowars is banned on YouTube. I don't know what the appeal process is for that one as new ownership or if we just make a new account or what the deal is there. We're still not entirely sure certain how to square that circle, but we will figure it out.
- [53:35]
A
Can you do some gamer, like, make the info, like spell it with a zero or something like that?
- [53:40]
D
Yeah, well, yeah, we'll figure out, like, if we get a different name or something, it's all fine. At the end of the day, we own the IP. But like, if we can get, you know, YouTube.comadinfowars, which has been banned repeatedly. I have no idea. Like, we're just gonna have to call YouTube and be like, we're not pieces of shit.
- [53:56]
A
Yeah. Get somebody on the horn.
- [53:57]
B
Yeah. Underdue management. Yeah.
- [53:59]
D
So much of this, man, is like, it's completely uncharted territory for everybody involved. Like, we are building this plane as we are flying it. And I really recommend doing like this. Like, it's so exciting. It's a reason to get up every day despite, like the fascist hell hole we live in. Like, it is. It is an amazing thing to be able to try to pull off because every day is a new mystery of where this is all going to take us. And I. And you're doing it for the right reasons. Like, this is, this is why you should.
- [54:25]
A
You should send YouTube a picture of you and all of the families, the Sandy Hook family, standing outside of Alex Jones's like, shuttered studio. Send it to YouTube. Maybe that'll help.
- [54:35]
D
Not outside, inside.
- [54:37]
A
Inside. Yeah, inside.
- [54:38]
D
Yeah.
- [54:39]
A
Sorry. In my head, I'm like, I'm like, and it looks like Jenny's dad's house from Forrest Gump.
- [54:45]
D
I actually don't really know what it. I mean, we know it's like a 50,000 square foot compound. And like, we know that has a lot of workout equipment in it for some fucking reason. Like, so much of the inventory list is like rowing Machines, and we don't know why.
- [54:59]
A
Well, that's how they're generating power. They have a bunch of the interns get on rowing machines and that's how they're powering the cameras and the electrical equipment.
- [55:08]
D
Yes, they're nothing if not climate change believers over at 4. So they're just trying to do what's right for the general ecology around the Austin area.
- [55:18]
A
Yeah, this studio actually works as a terraforming facility. There's actually tons of new growth forests and extinct wildlife that's of kind coming back kind of in the periphery in the neighborhood surrounding the facility.
- [55:31]
D
It's crazy good for them. You know, I appreciate their, their commitment to trying to stop global warming.
- [55:37]
B
Boy, are we gonna get video of you like fumigating in full horse headquarters. Like, you know, the, the conquerors come to claim the territory.
- [55:48]
D
I. I think that's the, that's the job of the families. We'll go in with them. Okay. I hope.
- [55:52]
B
Okay.
- [55:52]
D
But like we, But I want to let them again. I want them to know that people aren't giving up so they can do whatever the fuck they want. If we get access to the studio, if they want to live there, they can do it. I don't give a shit. Hell yeah.
- [56:04]
B
So, yeah, I seem to say that sort of like the Alex Jones parody. This is maybe an opening move, but it's not really the sort of the long term plan. So I mean, what exactly is the destination for infowars as a media property, like one year from now, five years from now? What exactly is association you think you want people. People to make?
- [56:24]
D
Yeah. So right off the bat, there's just a whole world. The Onion is the best at satirizing how the actual world is working. You know, I always bring up how the Onion News Network was a parody of like peak Balloon boy, cnn and like Clickhole was a parody of peak, like buzzfeed upworthy stuff. But we also had Sex House and Sex House was a parody of those like MTV dating shows from 2009 where they would like date your mom and all. It was like a ambient horror movie that we made on YouTube where the
- [56:49]
A
pop updates dating wasn't there.
- [56:51]
D
Wasn't there some.
- [56:52]
A
What was that called?
- [56:52]
D
It was the.
- [56:53]
A
They had the bubbles around the people's heads where they were like. They were like, hi, I'm Sarah. It's nice to meet you. And then there was like a bubble that would appear above their head and it was like, he smells weird. Like, I think it was next maybe. Yeah, next.
- [57:08]
D
Wait, date my Mom. Next.
- [57:11]
A
I watched all that shit, by the way, that. That was like the equivalent of being terminally online in like the 90s was like watching shit like, like that.
- [57:19]
D
And I was.
- [57:19]
A
Yeah.
- [57:20]
D
So, yeah, I would go home and watch MTV for like four straight hours.
- [57:23]
H
Yeah.
- [57:24]
D
And now I'm like this. So fucking don't do it. Yeah, we're talking about. Oh, yeah. So like, there's always an equivalent. So like the, the, the dominant mode right now is people selling you insane shit about gut health. I just saw in the New York Times, Sergey Brin, the co founder of Google, is now in a relationship with a gut health influencer and is on the, on the far right now because of it. Like, this is, this has truly infected, like, every part of our. The stuff that you guys cover has done it. And boy, we are. We're primed to make fun of it. So we have a. We have a bunch of people on tap, not just Tim, but a lot of people who are pros at this ready to do that. And then we'll let these. We'll let their characters develop. And if it, you know, creates a mockumentary or a series or something that we need to tour with, or if they turn into professional wrestlers or something, we'll just see where those characters go. And I think, like, we're creating a new kind of network here. I think it's, it's going to be a different kind of thing. But I hope people develop parasocial relationships with fake psychopaths. That's my goal.
- [58:23]
A
This is exactly what the world needs. I'm sitting here listening to this being
- [58:27]
D
like, when's it launch, man? Get me in there. You know, on Thursday, if we get it. We're launching on Thursday. So, like, we're, we're ready to go within, you know, within hours of the site flipping over.
- [58:38]
A
Whoa, let's go.
- [58:39]
B
So, yeah, so we'll let you go in a minute, but I have one question. It's like, what would you say to someone who does feel a little despairing looking at the media environment where it's like, CBS has taken over by essentially regime interest or like, you know, Twitter is now owned by a guy who tweets about white genocide every day? It seems like the worst people with the most money are hell bent on taking over the most popular platforms and using them for evil. So, I mean, what exactly is the, is the, the way forward, the ray of light in this situation?
- [59:11]
D
My message is that nobody fucking likes it. Like, it's very simple. The fact that we did this last Week. And it became like, the biggest news story in the country. Shows you that if anybody tries in the opposite direction, direction, people are on board. There was a great skeet. I wish I knew who was from. It was a guy, Blue sky, he was saying that, you know, a lot of companies are coming to realize that the great cultural Trump reset of 2025 did not actually happen. Like, this shit. Nobody wants this stuff. Everyone is playing like Morgan Whelan in a fucking target for, like, 18 months. And everyone's like, I don't want this shit. Like, and then they. They lost all their fucking customers. Like, nobody wants this. This horrible stuff that's happening to continue happening. They see the brutality of it. They see how horrible, horrible it is. You. You don't just have to look at, like, poll numbers to see it. You can go outside and look, go to the gas station, ask anybody out there. Like, that this era is dying, and the second you get onto the. You know, the old world has died, the new world is struggling to be born. And if you want to be a part of it, there's a wide open field. There's no easier way. These people are buying rubble. They are buying the previous generation of stuff to try to SAP the last gravitas out of it. And that's fine, but. But I don't want to participate in that. I want to make new, cool shit, and I want other people around there to do the same thing. So if you're listening to this podcast, you are a lot more likely to be able to make cool shit than to buy some legacy media outlet and ruin it and shelve all the good stuff about it. So do the first thing, and the world will catch up to you. Trust me, it will catch up. I know it sounds hard. Maybe nobody's going to understand you. Maybe your friends aren't going to understand you the first time you explain it, but just go for it. In a couple of years, viewers would be like, now. Now everybody is talking like, I did a few years ago. It is worth it. And there's no better time to start than now.
- [60:49]
B
All right, we're joined by the Onion CEO Ben Collins for the effort. Very excited to see what you do with infowars this week and in years to come.
- [60:57]
D
Yeah, thanks so much, guys. I really. I mean it when I say it. I really appreciate what you do.
- [61:01]
A
Likewise, brother. Thanks for listening to another episode of the QAA podcast. You can go to patreon.comqaa and subscribe for five bucks a month to get a whole second premium episode for every main episode that we put out. Plus you get instant access to this whole archive of premium episodes. For everything else, we've got a website that's qaapodcast.com listener until next week.
- [61:24]
D
May the deep dish bless you and keep.
- [61:34]
E
We have auto queued content based on your preferences.
- [61:38]
G
Hey, everybody, it's Tim Heidecker checking in here. I'm in the Onion headquarters here. Jamie Brew eating a sandwich. Bunch of guys trying to come up with funny ideas how that goes. You know, they got all the posters of all their dumb ideas. Women's bathroom, gender identity, whatever. Just. You don't have to stop because I'm walking around. Go back to business. Are we doing this or what? We taking over InfoWars, Mr. Collins? Is that. That what's going to happen?
- [62:08]
D
Yes, that's what's going to say.
- [62:09]
G
What are we going to do? We're going to do bunch of. We're going to make disrupt, right?
- [62:16]
D
That's correct. That's exactly what we're going to do.
- [62:17]
G
Well, you're my leader. I'm going to follow you into battle. We're going to. We're going to storm the gates, trial by combat, whatever it takes. Matt Carlin thinks he knows what's coming going on. He doesn't know anything. Whoever you are.
- [62:30]
D
Hi.
- [62:31]
G
And then they got kombucha. Now they're making everybody here drink kombucha. And it's making everybody turn into little lizards. Turn into little lizards running around. Anyhow, it's been a great launch. We're excited. Onion is on fire. I couldn't be happier, everybody. Rolling Stone, Time magazine, npr, pbs, NBC. They're all sucking on my dick. They can't wait. Can't wait. Can't wait.