Not Funny: The Onion Buys Infowars In Bankruptcy Auction

The leftist-satirical rag The Onion announced on Thursday that it had won a bankruptcy auction to acquire Infowars - the website founded and operated by Alex Jones since 1999.

On Wednesday, Jones said that the auction's trustee could choose any bidder it wanted - not necessarily the high bidder. Jones announced the sale on X Thursday morning.

"I just got word 15 minutes ago that my lawyers and folks met with the U.S. trustee over our bankruptcy this morning and they said they are shutting us down even without a court order this morning," he said. "The Connecticut democrats with The Onion newspaper bought us."

The Onion told the NY Times that the bid was sanctioned by the families of the victims of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, who won a $1.4 billion defamation lawsuit against Jones.

The Onion did not disclose the price it paid for Infowars and its assets, including Jones' production studio and supplement business.

Ben Collins, CEO of The Onion parent company, Global Tetrahedron, says he plans to relaunch Infowars in January as a parody of itself, mocking "weird internet personalities."

In a not-funny post, The Onion wrote:

What’s next for InfoWars remains a live issue. The excess funds initially allocated for the purchase will be reinvested into our philanthropic efforts that include business school scholarships for promising cult leaders, a charity that donates elections to at-risk third world dictators, and a new pro bono program pairing orphans with stable factory jobs at no cost to the factories.

As for the vitamins and supplements, we are halting their sale immediately. Utilitarian logic dictates that if we can extend even one CEO’s life by 10 minutes, diluting these miracle elixirs for public consumption is an unethical waste. Instead, we plan to collect the entire stock of the InfoWars warehouses into a large vat and boil the contents down into a single candy bar–sized omnivitamin that one executive (I will not name names) may eat in order to increase his power and perhaps become immortal.

After Infowars is raped and rebooted, the nonprofit Everytown for Gun Safety says it plans to advertise on it. Collins declined to disclose the value of said advertising deal, but that it was a multiyear agreement that would include banner ads and sponsored articles on the site.

John Feinblatt, president of Everytown, told the NY Times, "This was an opportunity for us to give The Onion the facts, the storytelling, the data and the research that’s at our fingertips," adding "And for them to give us the creativity of how to turn all of that information into new messaging to a new audience."

Collins said that the relaunched Infowars might publish its own satirical stories focusing on gun violence.

Chris Mattei, a lawyer for the Sandy Hook families, said in a statement that taking possession of Infowars amounted to accountability for "Alex Jones and his corrupt business."

"By divesting Jones of Infowars’ assets, the families and the team at The Onion have done a public service and will meaningfully hinder Jones’s ability to do more harm," said Mattei.

According to the NYT, "The plan is to relaunch it next year with an approach reminiscent of Clickhole, The Onion’s sister site that poked fun at “listicles” from BuzzFeed and other purveyors of viral content."