The Onion Wars - 3

Ignoring Jones’ excitement, Ben said in a steady voice, “The research part of your job will involve identifying all the active websites that spread your Sandy Hook conspiracies and lies.”

“What??? This is crazy! There must be dozens of thousands of them! If not hundreds of thousands,” Jones protested.

“More than a couple of million, actually. A lot of your messages were amplified by Russian bots and trolls and there’s no shortage of those on the Internet,” Ben continued in a steady voice.

“You must be f*cking kidding me! How am I supposed to identify them all? It will take me f*cking years!” Jones could only vaguely imagine how vast the right-wing conspiracy ecosystem was.

“I’m here to help. I have identified a lot of them, and many are connected to each other. So, for your purposes, that will make the job a little easier. I have visualized the connections here,” Ben said, displaying a map on the screen.

The map had “Infowars” in the middle with a sprawling network of URLs that picked up the Infowars messages. It was vast. Jones’ jaw dropped as Ben was quickly navigating through them by clicking on each URL and producing even a deeper network with more connections. It looked like a map of multi-layer fireworks coming on and off.

“That is literally millions of f*cking websites!” Jones growled in desperation.

“Yes, and I am sure we will unravel more of them as we go. I’ve only scratched the surface. This network goes both broad and deep.”

“Ok, ok, I get it,” Jones said, both frustrated and fascinated by the impact of his messaging. “What am I supposed to do with this once the website is identified as active?”

“Oh, this is the ‘Repair’ part of your job. You will post a specific message on each website’s homepage as this interstitial that will be displayed to everyone who opens up the website for at least 15 seconds,” Ben said. An interstitial ad design with Jones’ face and text popped up on the screen:

I am Alex Jones, the former owner of Infowars. For years, I spread conspiracies, defamatory statements, and malicious lies about Sandy Hook elementary school shooting, its victims, and survivors. None of those were true. Sandy Hook shooting indeed happened on Dec.14, 2012, in Newtown, CT, taking lives of 20 children and 6 adults. It was not a government hoax or staged event. The surviving parents were not “crisis actors” as I stated. I owe the Sandy Hook families over $1 billion in defamation damages. My Infowars assets are now a part of The Onion Wars media network, the sponsor of this message. This message is mandated as a repair action for my defamatory statements. For details: TheOnionWars.com

Jones felt a huge clump of something coming up from his stomach to the throat. Was it fear? Disgust? He hadn’t experienced that unpleasant feeling for a long time, but it was so strong he couldn’t hold it.

“Bathroom!” he barked, quickly taking the VR set off his head and running to the toilet. It took him about five minutes to purge precious little, since he hadn’t had breakfast.

“Are you OK?” Ben asked when Jones returned and plunged himself on the sofa. “Should I request medical assistance for you?”

“No, I’m not OK, but no f*cking medical assistance is needed. I have lost my health insurance with all my assets to your f*cking Onion Wars.”

“We at The Onion Wars care for our employees. A high deductible plan is a part of your benefits package.”

“High deductible??? We all know how that works: I’ll have to foot the f*cking bill for 90% of the costs out of my pocket, right?”

“That is correct, until you meet the deductible amount,” Ben stated calmly.

“No, thank you. I will feel better when I eat something.”

“Help yourself to anything you find in the kitchen,” Ben said, “but make it quick, we have a lot of work to do.”

Jones searched through the kitchen cabinets and the fridge. He found some eggs and butter and decided to make fried eggs, with some juice and bagel with cheese. He had forgotten when he had to cook for himself, and that was annoying. But satisfying at the same time, when he realized he could still do it.

“So, how these f*cking interstitials will be paid for? I’m sure those websites wouldn’t want to place them for f*cking free,” Jones finally asked, while eating his basic breakfast.

“Leave that to me,” Ben replied. “Your job will be to verify that the website is still active and push one button to place the ad.”

“But I’m curious, how are they going to be placed? Who’s f*cking paying for it?”

“We have reached an agreement with Google Ads, Facebook Ads and most of other social media advertising departments that they will run the ad as a part of their philanthropic and educational program.”

“And they f*cking agreed to that???” Jones asked incredulously.

“Yes. More than that, they were happy to do it as a lot of people are tired of your lies.”

“What about those websites that don’t run any ads with the f*cking Big Tech companies?” Jones asked almost mockingly. He knew there were thousands of them.

“We’ll have to pay for the ad placement.”

“Don’t tell me it will come out of my f*cking salary as well,” Jones smirked.

“No, on the contrary. If you manage to place them for a reasonable fee, the value of that placement will be deducted from the debt you owe to the Sandy Hook families.”

“Really? Can we start with those?” suddenly, Jones felt like that was a way out. What if he just finds enough of them to chip away at his debt?

“No. We will start with the largest websites with the most impact. For example, today we will start with Reddit.”

“F*ck! There are thousands of f*cking threads there discussing Infowars and Sandy Hook!”

“Tens of thousands,” Ben corrected Jones. “And I haven’t unraveled them all yet. Shall we start?”

“I guess,” Jones dragged his feet from the kitchen table to the sofa. “You won’t get off my f*cking back, will you?”

“Did you wash the dishes?” Ben asked strictly.

“What are you, my mother?” Jones mumbled.

“For the time being, while you are here, I’m your everything,” Ben said. “Please go back and wash your dishes. We have no maids or housekeepers here.”

Jones went back to the kitchen and washed the dishes and the frying pan by hand as there was no dishwasher. He didn’t like it; it was like going back to the years he was single and broke.

“Ok, what the f*ck do we do now?” he asked, coming back to the sofa and putting on the VR set.

“As I said, we will start with Reddit. Here are a couple of threads I found, go into them, and verify if they still talked about Sandy Hook within the last 10 days. If they did, click on the ‘place the ad’ button and I will place the interstitial.”

Jones did that for the first highlighted link. When he clicked ‘place the ad’ button, Ben said, “Excellent, done. Now you will have to log in through a regular user account and make sure that the interstitial is indeed there and works properly.”

Jones did just that. He logged in as a Reddit user and immediately saw the interstitial. He felt the clump coming up to his throat again. He tried to close the ad, but it didn’t even have that option, occupying the entire screen for the full 15 seconds. After that, it was gone. So it worked exactly as it was designed – impossible to close, taking the entire screen up for 15 seconds.

“Now do it from another user account,” Ben said.

“Are you f*cking kidding me?”

“You say ‘f*cking’ a lot. Please refrain from using obscenities. Yes, we have to do multiple verifications.”

Jones growled but obeyed. He used another account to see that the ad was still there.

“And the last time, through a VPN from a different part of the world,” Ben said.

“Arrrgh,” Jones growled. “With this pace, I’ll be here forever!”

“Triangulation is a part of the repair part of your job,” Ben said. “We will not proceed to another URL until everything is done properly. It will be faster once you get the hang of it.”

And so they went, identifying the links, verifying their discussions of Sandy Hook conspiracies, placing the interstitial and triangulating it as different users. By lunch time, they were done with less than a hundred Reddit threads.

“Why can’t we just place the f*cking ad at the Reddit homepage? So that it pops up right away, even on those threads that have nothing to do with Sandy Hook discussions?” Jones finally asked, exacerbated with the tedious repetitive process.

“Well, why didn’t you ask me before?” Ben said, and Jones thought he heard a note of sarcasm in the AI voice. “Are you sure you want to do that, though? Think about the exposure: It might provoke unnecessary discussions.”

“Better than going through all the f*cking threads one by one,” Jones mumbled.

“Please don’t say ‘f*cking’ again. Let’s see if this works,” Ben said and went into the main Reddit URL. After the placement was confirmed, Jones triangulated its appearance. He noticed that the ad didn’t induce a desire to vomit in him anymore.

“Can I have lunch now?” he asked Ben. It was 1:30 pm.

“You sure can. Everything in the kitchen is at your disposal.”

“Can I just order something in? If I have to cook for myself three times a day, I’ll f*cking die!”

“Should I set up a swearing jar for you?”

“What am I, five?”

“You certainly sound like it. I asked you not to use the vulgar language, multiple times.”

“Ok, I’ll try not to swear. So, can I order the food in?”

“You sure can, but it will come out of your salary.”

“Out of my salary again! Ok, let me order something from McDonalds, even though I haven’t eaten it for years.”

“As you wish,” Ben said, displaying the McDonald’s menu on the screen.

Jones placed the order and asked, “Can I play a game while we are waiting for the delivery?”

“You sure can,” Ben said and paused. Jones’ face softened into a smile before Ben added, “The game of identifying and verifying the websites for the interstitial…”

Part 2 is here:

Part 1, where it all started: