How to organize the new creative director of Onion Infowars to get the conspiracy laugh

In just a few days, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones may be asking “Who cuts the onion?”

The answer will be comedian and singer Tim Heidecker.

Satirical newspaper The Onion posted a new proposal last week to take over Infowars, the conspiracy-fueled fake news website Jones founded in 1999. If the judge approves the settlement, the Onion will be able to begin publishing its content on the Infowars site as soon as April 30.

The plan is the latest step in Onion’s year-long quest to dominate the field. Jones was forced to liquidate his assets, including Infowars, to pay more than $1.4 billion in legal settlements to the families of 20 students and six staff members who were shot and killed in the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

Jones made a number of false claims about the incident, including that it was a hoax, that no children died and that parents were led to trouble actors.

But Onion is not waiting for approval to get his Infowars team in place.

The company announced last week that Heidecker, one half of comedy duo Tim & Eric, will be creative director of the new Infowars – and his views on Jones have caught the attention of the conspiracy writer. Jones vowed to fight adoption.

“Just because you’re wearing my shirt doesn’t mean you’re me,” Jones said on Infowars’ live broadcast last Monday. “This is going to backfire big, folks.”

Friday, Heidecker said As It Happened host Nil Köksal on how he plans to make readers laugh with a website created with great pain. Here is part of their conversation:

He has played Alex Jones before. I saw some what you posted on Instagram, you walk around the onion offices. How do you feel at this moment, knowing that you have touched him?

It’s very surreal. It’s hard to process. I feel like it happened to someone else.

But another way it connects to my previous work and comics is very interesting.

Once you’re fully in place as creative director, when people go to the Infowars site, what do you think they’ll see and experience?

In the beginning I think we’re going to have a lot of fun with the Infowars ecosystem, or the vision we have for Infowars, [and] goof in that little time.

Then I think it’s going to take a little time, but we’re going to transition to providing good, high-quality, unconventional comics that have grown from the Internet. It has been circulating on various social media for the past few years. And just really try to give a chance to the future, and my other friends, and just try to do the best things.

What is the power of that at this time?

The strength of that is that we’re in a place where media conglomerates are getting stronger and restricting what they invest in, and we felt there was a gap in the market for this kind of comedy – this kind of culture, entertainment, whatever.

The onion isn’t there yet, though [it’s] I’ll just have it [Infowars]and the question is “What do you do about it?” And we want to do something good with it – and the meta humor of the second life of Infowars is something very different from what it started with.

This agreement to sell Infowars to Onyanisi has come this far because the parents of Sandy Hook supported us. They are still fighting to get paid. What can this new era of Infowars do to those families?

I think it really starts to get paid for the merchandise that we sell, and managing all the assets and managing that.

And so it is a start to get them justice, or to get them more justice, to find [Jones] in fact, he should be responsible for his actions.

There were many people who were against Alex Jones and Infowars. However, court documents reveal just how big it was. There are times when they bring in $800,000 US per day, millions of people visit the site. You’re kidding, but what’s your sense of what it meant to the people who made all that money?

I think we’re past the peak of Infowars maybe five years ago, or 2016. I think there was a time when he held a lot of power in this country, as a voice and an influence on how people vote.

Now, I feel like everything is falling apart. My gut says that his audience is probably mostly made up of rubberneckers, or train wreck watchers – watching for entertainment purposes.

There seems to be a lot of frustration on the right. Trump crowd, MAGA – I feel like we’re at a point where we feel used and abused. But they’re starting to look like they’re not really buying the snake oil they were sold years ago.

Jones is still shouting about this and other things. There will still be pockets of people who listen to him, who follow him. Did his followers reach out?

Not really. If you keep yourself away from Twitter [X]you won’t see it, but if you look, there are people coming in.

But what I’ve noticed, and we’ve all noticed, is that it’s quite the opposite. Even on Twitter, there are people who think it’s funny.

My work is full of strange things that are confusing if you are out of humor or out of context. I did a whole show where I was convicted of killing 19 kids at a music festival, and in that show I was arrested, there was a mugshot. And Alex Jones posts all these things as if they were real, and the fans love it. They have a field day and all this.

There are many comedians who would say that times like these, although difficult, are ripe for humor and creativity. There are some who may say that the truth is too high to be imagined. How does that affect what you do?

I think our job is to show, in different ways, the world as we see it. What you do for people who have the same opinion or the same opinion, [is] it gives them some sense of normalcy or relief from the chaos, knowing that there are other like-minded people out there who find the same thing funny, find the same thing frustrating or maddening. And I think that’s in context [of] that’s what funny jokes have to offer.

How do you feel when you step into that character?

It’s a joy. Full id. I go into a fugue state, and it’s very exciting.

Do you think you’ll ever get tired of it?

Yes. I think in the beginning we said, listen, we’re going to talk about this for a while, and then it’s going to be creative.

Another thing you may have noticed about my work is that I don’t sit still. So I think we’ll just play with this dead mouse for a while, like a cat would, and then move on to another ball of yarn.