“Legally, we have to say this is a direct parody of Alex Jones and all this nonsense, until we’re allowed to take all his stuff,” Collins tells WIRED. “But until then, we’re having a lot of fun.” Jones’ attorneys did not return requests for comment from him; message to Infowars email accounts were returned as undeliverable.
Lawson calls for the arrest of Infowars The name “karmic justice” for the Sandy Hook family, who have they have not received the payment yet from Jones. The Onion plans to donate $100,000 from product sales directly to the family, Collins told Associated Press.
The Infowars Parody also meets business and cultural needs, Lawson explains.
“We realized at some point we needed a satirical product that was original Internet satire,” Lawson says. “But the problem is that the Internet is very difficult to mock because there is no single network. To mock, you need a shared understanding of a certain way that you break it.”
When Collins became pregnant at risk Infowarsthey began to see it as an opportunity to target a digital format that was too mainstream: “These idiots who have a million listeners (and) will say and do anything to make money,” Lawson says. “It’s these announcers, that’s what you can make fun of, Joe Rogan and Alex Jones.”
The idea, Collins says, is to mock the brain rot of cyber conspiracy that has infected the entire social media landscape. “It allows us to like analyze how stupid everything is and how people are talking now,” he explains. “People are constantly trying to find a big secret thing that runs the world, but really, the big secret thing that runs the world is right in front of us, it’s a big rogue government that we live under our thumb.”
Besides Heidecker, the live streams will include other familiar faces and voices. Tim Robinson of I Think You Should Leave and Chairman’s Company he calls out as “Tim from Ohio” during the premiere, leading to debate about whether Bozo the Clown was several different people. Fictional news anchor Jim Haggerty (Brad Holbrook) also returns, having quit his broadcasting job at the Onion News Network to raise awareness of the dim-witted while promoting products like “Pork Water.”
And a painful opening scene produced by comedian Nick Lutsko, who has regularly performed songs mocking Jones and other right wing people. This song was immediately broken when Lutsko’s idea for a cartoon “Infowars Elf Mask” is rejected by the higher ups of the organization—but he keeps forcing the character back on the topic anyway.
“This is like, ‘Avengers, get together’ kind of thing for everyone who’s been making fun of these asses for years,” Collins says. “I think if (these actors) had been directly wrong for Trumpism we probably wouldn’t have Trumpism.” Lawson adds, “I worry about democracy, and I think satire is the answer to that, to be able to point out things that we look around and say, ‘This isn’t right.’
