From the new trends files: Liars are getting better and richer

So far, the Alex Jones lawsuit for lies and defamation regarding the 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre looks set to cost him about $49 million. He worth is estimated at ~$135-270 million by the New York Times. Fortunately there's another Sandy Hook defamation lawsuit on tap. Maybe he will lose another ~$50 million. We can only hope.

What liars have learned from the Jones lawsuits is two simple things: First, do not defame people. You can lie all you want, even tell blatant whoppers, but just stay on the good side of the law. That strategy allows plenty of room for lying and lying and lying a hell of a lot more. That can inflict massive damage on American democracy, the rule of law and civil liberties as we are witnessing right now.

Second, if you are a good enough liar, you too can be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. 

The floodgates are open to blatant lying for fun and profit. It is a freaking goldrush! The NYT writes:

Don’t Expect Alex Jones’s Comeuppance to Stop Lies

His success has inspired a new generation of conspiracy theorists, who have learned how to stay away from legal trouble.

The jury’s verdict came after Mr. Jones was found liable for defaming Mr. Heslin and Ms. Lewis, whom for years he falsely accused of being crisis actors in a “false flag” operation plotted by the government.

Court records showed that Mr. Jones’s Infowars store, which sells dubious performance-enhancing supplements and survival gear, made more than $165 million from 2015 to 2018. Despite his deplatforming, Mr. Jones still appears as a guest on popular podcasts and YouTube shows, and millions of Americans still look to him as, if not a reliable chronicler of current events, at least a wacky diversion. (And a wealthy one — an expert witness in the trial estimated the net worth of Mr. Jones and Free Speech Systems, his holding company, at somewhere between $135 million and $270 million.)

In the coming weeks, Mr. Jones — a maestro of martyrdom — will no doubt spin his court defeat into hours of entertaining content, all of which will generate more attention, more subscribers, more money.

But a bigger reason for caution is that, whether or not Mr. Jones remains personally enriched by his lies, his shtick is everywhere these days.

You can see and hear Mr. Jones’s influence on Capitol Hill, where attention-seeking Republican politicians often sound like they’re auditioning for slots on Infowars. When Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, suggests that a mass shooting could have been orchestrated to persuade Republicans to support gun-control measures, as she did in a Facebook post about the July 4 shooting in Highland Park, Ill., she’s playing hits from Mr. Jones’s back catalog.

You can also see Mr. Jones’s influence in right-wing media. When Tucker Carlson stokes nativist fears on his Fox News show, or when a Newsmax host spins a bizarre conspiracy theory about an effort by Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, to have Justice Brett Kavanaugh of the Supreme Court killed, it’s proof that Infowars’ DNA has entered the conservative bloodstream.

Even outside politics, Mr. Jones’s choleric, wide-eyed style has influenced the way in which a new generation of conspiracy theorists looks for fame online.

These creators don’t all rant about goblins and gay frogs, as Mr. Jones has. But they’re pulling from the same fact-free playbook. Some of them focus on softer subject matter — like the kooky wellness influencers who recently went viral for suggesting that Lyme disease is a “gift” caused by intergalactic space matter, or like Shane Dawson, a popular YouTube creator who has racked up hundreds of millions of views with conspiracy theory documentaries in which he credulously examines claims such as “Chuck E. Cheese reuses uneaten pizza” and “Wildfires are caused by directed energy weapons.”  

It would be too simple to blame (or credit) Mr. Jones for inspiring the entire modern cranksphere. But it’s safe to say that many of today’s leading conspiracy theorists have found the same profitable sweet spot of lies and entertainment value.  

Other conspiracy theorists are less likely than Mr. Jones to end up in court, in part because they’ve learned from his mistakes. Instead of straightforwardly accusing the families of mass-shooting victims of making it all up, they adopt a [faux] naïve, “just asking questions” posture while poking holes in the official narrative.

Sadly, adopting a fake “just asking questions” facade is just how easy it is to dance away from defamation lawsuits. Any idiot can do it. Does that make Jones an idiot? 

That's not an accusation, I’m just asking questions. Inquiring minds want to know. 🤨

A rhetorical question bubbles up from the toxic cauldron of poisonous dark free speech. Can American democracy and society withstand the now undeniably staggering power of divisive lies social media, online bullshittery, podcasts, and etc. in the crankshpere? That’s a topic of a blog post coming here soon.

This** will soon be recycled into a 

tasty new Chuck E. Cheese pizza!

Yum!

** “This” includes the plastic plate and fork