‘We have to mock the madness of this place’: football player Tim Heidecker on the influence of being the new boss of Infowars | Funny

If you’ve been listening to Infowars for years, you’ve probably heard a very angry person scream that the 2020 election is rigged because “a regenerated corpse” Joe Biden, or Medicines in water to turn frogs gayor the Sandy Hook school shooting, which killed 20 children and six staff members, being fake. Founded in 1999, Alex Jones’s Infowars has long been a toxic platform conspiracy beliefs and real life effects, in addition to amazing nutritional supplements. But if Onion has his way, future InfoWars will have a very different outcome.

The satirical newspaper has been working for several years to take over the site, amid controversial charges Jones’ lie about the shooting of Sandy Hook in 2012. Pending the approval of the Texas court, the tower may soon be in the hands of the onion with the new creative director, comedian Tim Heidecker, known for his surreal paintings and far-reaching mockery. The result would be the transformation of a dangerous political tool into a comedy center that destroys everything Infowars has ever stood for.

“One of my first thoughts is a good joke, over time, if we can change the meaning and understanding of the site,” Heidecker says, “that’s (Jones’) legacy.”

The way to take over the Onion has been bent. In 2022, the court ordered Jones to pay $1.4bn – a record-breaking award – to the families of children killed in school shootings. For a long time, Mr. Jones pretended that what happened was a lie, which caused the perpetrators to torture the families very cruelly. To pay off the debt, Infowars’ parent company was ordered to sell the stock.

That’s where the Onions came in. After trying to buy this place it was was banned in 2024The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron, reached a six-month deal this week rent from a court-appointed trustee for $81,000 per month, with the option to renew. Ultimately, The Onion plans to buy all of the site’s assets, Ben Collins, CEO of Global Tetrahedron, said. he told CNN.

But first, it has to face another legal curveball. Wednesday Wednesday, a The Texas court was temporarily suspended an agreement issued after an emergency response from Jones’ legal team. A new trial has been set for 28 May.

Collins remained confident. “This new, unprecedented suspension does nothing but delay our agreement with the host to control InfoWars,” he said. he wrote on social media.

If all goes according to plan for the Onion, the new InfoWars – which has a cute rainbow logo, after Jones. what to say that government drugs make humans (and amphibians) gay – it will start as an initial preview. Heidecker will play a role inspired by Jones, with a pushy voice – perhaps angry about shouting about the new world order – coming from deep within his throat. Comedian, whose past work includes the Adult Swim Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! and the podcast Office Hours Live, has already started visited the Onion offices and appeared outside Independence Hall in Philadelphia in a state.

“I’m not a guy who likes to beat jokes to the ground, but I think for a while it’s going to be fun to play with (Jones) and just remind people of what he is, he’s an actor, and not a very good one,” Heidecker said. “He did very sad things. It’s hard to say how much he has destroyed this country.”

Jones is not talking about all this sleep; in fact, he has been standing with a shirt, as he appeared on the latest Infowars radio broadcast to criticize the Onion takeover. By practicing self-control to the system, Jones too has been sent on X that Heidecker “created sex/child abuse shows & killed Adult Swim shows” and linked him to “satanic rituals”.

Asked to respond to the allegations, Heidecker said: “I’m happy to confirm all of this to you,” saying he recently “sworn my allegiance to the Dark Lord” in his case. podcast.

Jokes aside, Jones seems to be confusing Tim and Eric’s past cartoons with real life. “He went ahead with a lot of these things,” Heidecker said. “I think the audience was like, ‘Alex, come on man, this is a joke, you’re failing.'” (The biggest reaction to one of X’s photos reads: “Sorry Alex, I hate libs too, but I’m always on the side of humor and lightheartedness.”)

For Heidecker, this strong reaction is a sign that Jones’ followers may be drifting away from him. “People are worried about filling their gas tanks here, and these cultural wars that they have made themselves feel are not going to be important,” he says. He hopes the show will “chip away” and help people realize that “maybe they’ve been following along with the snake oil salesman”.

Chris Mattei, a lawyer for Sandy Hook families, hopes the same. “If their programs can be interesting to Jones’ old audience, and help bring them out of the dark, that would be great,” he said. he told the New York Times last week.

As the site does, the new InfoWars will feature articles, videos and additional ads. A preview of this page shows commercials promising to “turn your gold into gold” and teach you to float in space.

Another Heidecker contact, Jim Haggerty, is a former host of the Onion-show Today Now — but was replaced. “For 35 years, I was part of the problem, in the words of many publishers, and speaking lies,” he says. cart of the new InfoWars series. “But now I am free from my chains, and my only business is freedom.” Haggerty, played by Brad Holbrook, will be a version of Tucker Carlson on the platform, Heidecker says. Others on the original small team include Mia DiPasquale as head of programming; Jamie Brew, writer from the Onion; and Matt Carlin, creator of Office Hours Live.

In addition to renting out the space, the new InfoWars will help Sandy Hook families financially through sales. “It’s been eight years and three days since the Sandy Hook families filed this lawsuit, and they haven’t received a single penny,” Collins told CNN. “So, we’re excited to get them some immediate cash from the sale — and some long-term cash from the acquisition of this product.”

Eventually, perhaps this fall, Heidecker plans to transition InfoWars from a direct-to-comedy community. “We have to have time to do what I think everyone is waiting for” by showing “the madness of the site – playing with it and mocking”, he says. But this will have a “short shelf life”. One thing that drew him to the project – his involvement began with a cold call from The Onion – was the possibility of creating a larger “exciting, unconventional, multi-faceted” home on the Internet.

“The look is a lot different now than it was when I started” in the early 2000s, Heidecker says. The days of Funny or Die, Adult Swim and the original YouTube channel for entertainment are over. Social media offers opportunities, but the platforms “are not very good, they are not well paid. Everyone is just in the desert. And I thought, well, if the onion has money and interest in growing, it would be a great opportunity.”

Jones told his followers that he would continue “the same show” on another platform. (The original Infowars did not immediately respond to a request for comment.) In the meantime, the defunct InfoWars can provide the opposite.

“We definitely live in a confusing, scary and crazy world where everything you see and hear is crazy,” Heidecker says. But humor can make us feel that “we are not alone anymore: you feel this way, I have always felt this way … and I see you saying: ‘Yes, you are not crazy. This he’s crazy.’”