Ben Collins is the CEO of The onionthe leading satirical media outlet in the United States “Say we’re like Charlie Hebdobut better,” he advises, so that the European public understands what The onion ago. Collins spent more than a decade as a technology journalist focusing on misinformation and conspiracies The daily beast and NBC.
In 2024 I changed career. He wanted to take a step back and relaunch himself The onion‘, which was discontinued in 2013. The monthly magazine now has over 50,000 subscribers and is its main source of revenue. But the US elections dashed his hopes for calm. “I had to recommit myself and do everything I knew how to do: create a great story the old-fashioned way,” he says, referring in part to The onionThe attempt to buy Infowars, the conspiracy website run by Alex Jones, who was ordered to pay $1.5 billion to the families of children killed in the Sandy Hook school shooting after repeatedly denying the incident occurred.
He now describes his job as “taking a perfectly written headline or story from someone else and making sure everyone sees it.” He spoke with EL PAÍS in Barcelona, where he participated in the Mozilla Festival with a speech entitled “Why satire is important for good technology”
Request. Why is satire important in technology?
Answer. If you can’t poke fun at the inflated valuations of AI companies and the people who run them, you’re not painting the full picture of what’s happening. We are clearly in a bubble and have to make fun of them. One of my favorite titles by The onion it’s “A guy who sucks as a person sees huge potential in AI,” and I think that’s how everyone feels about this stuff right now. We must hold power to account; this is the rule of jesters and journalists. Where is the real power right now if not in these companies?
Q. They don’t like jokes.
TO. Elon tried to ban The onion on X and failed. His inability to be cool affects everyone’s lives. We receive removal requests from everyone from Democratic governors to Donald Trump.
Q. But they know it’s all a joke.
TO. But they are very offended by it. The Donald Trump case was from before he ran for president in 2012. The headline was: “When You’re Feeling Down, Remember I’ll Be Dead in About 10 or 20 Years.” We received a crazy letter from Michael Cohen, his lawyer, and we framed it.
Q. He didn’t like the title.
TO. The origin stories of all these people are a joke. Donald Trump ran for president because he was mocked by Barack Obama during the White House correspondents’ dinner. Elon Musk bought Twitter because he thought there was some kind of magic button on Twitter that would make him cool. It’s just a revenge fantasy against the world that didn’t accept them. We should do a better job of trying to accept people who are weird or who have social problems. But they have more power than anyone else, and ultimately what they do is seek revenge.
Q. Revenge of the Nerds?
TO. This is unfair to nerds. They are more than idiots. I wrote a story about Palmer Luckey (creator of Oculus and former Meta executive), in which I explained that he funded The Donald, a pro-Trump forum that ended up being the planning site for the January 6 attack on the Capitol. He now runs a drone and weapons company. Everyone has an origin story and all these people in power have been rejected by polite society. There are two ways to handle the situation: you can reform yourself and be a better person and look inward, or you can become a fascist authoritarian totalitarian. Most of them chose the latter.
Q. Donald Trump jokes about everything. Reality seems like satire. Isn’t that so? The onion one harder job?
TO. People say Trump is funny. But have you ever heard Trump actually laugh? Like a genuine laugh, the kind you can’t hold back? It never happened. His lines are like, “That person is fat” or “That person is stupid.” It’s bully behavior. We are something else.
Q. What are you?
TO. People always say that the world has turned into something The onion has done for the last 37 years. I think it’s worse, frankly. I don’t like The onion must invent things that seem truer than what is in the New York Times. But who else will? It’s not that we’ve changed, it’s that the media around us has changed. If what we write seems more real than the news, it is an indictment against the news, not against us.
Q. What is the state of the media?
TO. Things have changed radically. Almost all of my friends are reporters and have two options: keep their heads down in the office where they work and keep their big paycheck, or go independently and report what’s really happening. I know for a fact that all the media that had a resurgence in the early Trump years fired all the great reporters or told them to shut up.
Q. Please do it The onion?
TO. People literally tell us things like, “I canceled my subscription to Washington Post Why The onion “It’s healthy.” I think that’s true. Being bombarded all day by constant images of children being dragged out of nurseries isn’t good for you. Obviously you should know this is going on, but in terms of processing news on a larger scale, you’ll probably be better off The onion in the mail once a month rather than watching CNN all day.
Q. It’s a current trend. People are turning away from the news.
TO. Yes, but at the same time they are re-engaging in civic life, at least in Chicago. I’m not just saying this because my girlfriend (Kat Abughazaleh in Illinois) is running for Congress. People know enough to realize that what’s happening is terribly bad, and seeing another person kidnapped on the street isn’t going to change their opinion anyway. I’m already 100% on outrage. Now I’m in action mode. You see it, for example, with Zohran Mamdani (newly elected mayor of New York) and all the people who volunteer. The same thing is happening in Chicago, but against ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement): everyone has a 3D printed whistle for when they are in the neighborhood.
People have changed their news consumption from “what’s happening?” to “how can I change things?” We don’t provide “how to change things,” but we provide catharsis. We give off that feeling: “You’re right, everything is horrible, but here are some jokes and something you can write on a protest sign.” We offer a way to vent, because people already know that the world is a mess and that eight people are in charge of the world, and they’re all evil.
Q. As a journalist, you have covered disinformation. Some people may see humorous titles in The onion as misinformation.
TO. Misinformation is meant to deceive, and the type of misinformation I covered targeted people with the fewest rights: trans people, immigrants, and was used for political gain. The onion it doesn’t. Everyone says we punch up, but it’s not just that. We try to get to the heart of the matter by making fun of her, which is different than making up lies about a random guy. The quality of the person corresponds to the quality of the joke. We would never make an AI video of us dumping shit all over America’s cities.
Q. What impact will AI have? The onion?
TO. It helps us in the sense that AI humor is so unfunny that everything we do seems like the smartest thing that ever happened. AI is not just a plagiarism machine; it’s a machine that sucks the personality out of any piece of writing or art. When we do things ourselves, it’s clear that we have heart and soul that really makes us stand out.
Q. AI is terrible at pranks.
TO. Go to ChatGPT now and ask for a joke about what’s going on right now – your eyes will roll out of your head and out the window.
The war with Infowars
Q. The situation with infowars a few months ago it was extraordinary.
TO. It was huge. We had no idea if we were going to get it.
Q. Days had passed since Trump’s election.
TO. We made our offer, they made theirs too, but it was lower. That day was crazy, because we too, half-jokingly, bid on all their supplements, and suddenly we had a warehouse full of heretic pills and no idea what to do with them. It was chaos. Meanwhile, we watched Alex Jones lose his mind. Then we went to court, but we didn’t have a traditional bankruptcy lawyer, because, well, we just didn’t have any.
Q. Was it improvised?
TO. We had been preparing the application for some time; we wanted to make sure the families were okay with it (Alex Jones was sued by the families of the Sandy Hook shooting for saying it didn’t happen). We asked them if they agreed with our offer and they were very enthusiastic. Then the judge said it wasn’t enough money. We thought, “This isn’t really worth anything, but it’s okay.” At this point it has become something of a source of pride. If this man gets away with it, if he ends up manipulating the legal system to not pay these people, when he owes $1.5 billion and hasn’t paid anything, then the right thing to do is move on. We don’t know what will happen next.
Q. Is the legal battle still ongoing?
TO. Yes, we’re still trying.
Q. And what’s the plan if you succeed?
TO. Create a website focused on showing how everything in American life is a scam and how these people help different types. Not just Alex Jones. Almost all types of Internet scammers are selling you something behind the scenes, using their cult of personality to do so.
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