Many are wondering why The Onion purchased Infowars from conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, or how this came to be in the first place. On Thursday, November 14, the satirical newspaper bought the right-wing after Jones was forced to sell it at auction to pay off the families of the Sandy Hook Elementary School victims, many of whom supported The Onion’s bid. The outlet lampooned the purchase by having “Global Tetrahedron CEO” Bryce Tetraeter make a statement about why he bought InfoWars. But Ben Collins, the CEO of The Onion, has revealed yet another reason why this happened.
Why did The Onion really buy Infowars?
Collins explains that Bluesky, the surging competitor to X (formerly Twitter), was actually a part of the reason why The Onion bought Infowars.
Writing as “Tim Onion” on the platform, Collins explains that “people on Bluesky” told him that it would be funny to buy InfoWars, and well, he went through with it. He admits that “those people were right” and that this is “the funniest thing that has ever happened.”
The person who made the initial suggestion on Bluesky, @ceej.online, wrote in a post on June 6, 2024 that “Ben Collins has the opportunity to do the funniest thing ever” in response to an article about Alex Jones needing to sell Infowars. Collins then quoted the post and cheekily responded with an image of Elon Musk posting “Looking into it” on X. Five months later, it actually came to pass.
Collins also shares in a separate post that The Onion owns everything from Infowars, including “the broadcasting equipment, the supplements, [and] the intellectual property of Brain Force Plus,” and that they’re still figuring out what to do with it all.
According to The New York Times, the outlet plans to relaunch Infowars in 2025 in a similar vein to ClickHole, which was launched in 2014 by The Onion to make fun of clickbait sites like BuzzFeed and Upworthy.
