“Legally, we have to say this is a direct parody of Alex Jones and all that shit, until we’re allowed to take over all his stuff,” Collins tells WIRED. “But until then, we’re having a lot of fun.” Jones’ attorneys did not respond to requests for comment; messages to information wars Email accounts were returned as undeliverable.

Lawson calls for the seizure of information wars name “karmic justice” for the Sandy Hook families, who have yet to receive any settlement money from Jones. The Onion plans to initially donate $100,000 from product sales directly to families, Collins told the Associated Press.

He information wars Parody also meets commercial and cultural needs, Lawson explains.

“At some point we realized we needed some satirical product that was satire native to the Internet,” Lawson says. “But the problem is that it’s very difficult to satirize the Internet because there is no single Internet. To do satire, you need a shared understanding of some medium that is broken.”

When Collins conceived of acquiring tricks information warsThey began to see it as an opportunity to target an all-too-common digital format: “These boastful idiots who have a million listeners [and] “They will say and do anything to make money,” Lawson says. “It’s these podcasters, they’re what you can lampoon, the Joe Rogans and the Alex Joneses.”

The idea, Collins says, is to ridicule the conspiratorial brain rot of the Internet that has infected the entire social media ecosystem. “It allows us to analyze how fucking stupid everything is and how people talk now,” he explains. “People are constantly trying to find the big secret that rules the world, but in reality, the big secret that rules the world is right in front of us, it is the big, stupid, corrupt government that we live under the control of.”

In addition to Heidecker, the live broadcasts will include other familiar faces and voices. Tim Robinson of I think you should go and The chair company calls as “Tim from Ohio” in the premiere episode, sparking debate over whether Bozo the Clown was actually several different people. Fictional news anchor Jim Haggerty (Brad Holbrook) also returns, having quit his anchor job at Onion News Network to spout paranoid and wild opinions while advertising products like “Hog Water.”

And a delirious opening theme is provided by comedian and musician Nick Lutsko, who has frequently gone viral with tunes mocking Jones and other right-wing personalities. This song was immediately derailed when Lutsko’s idea for a cartoon “information wars The “Elf” mascot is rejected by the corporate higher-ups, but continues to force the character back into the theme anyway.

“This is very much like an ‘Avengers Assemble’ thing for everyone who’s been making fun of these assholes for years,” Collins says. “I think so [this cast] If they had been directly opposed to Trumpism from the beginning, we probably wouldn’t have Trumpism.” Lawson adds: “I care about democracy and I think satire is the answer to that, being able to point out the things that we look around us and say, ‘This is not right.'”