Former InfoWars employee not-so-fondly recalls shooting guns and office punch-ups with Alex Jones
Aux Features Aux
InfoWars, the unhinged, conspiracy-focused “news” site run by the consistently level-headed reverse-minotaur Alex Jones, has always seemed like a shitty place to work. Whether it’s having to produce footage of Jones roaring his morally reprehensible Sandy Hook opinions, taking work orders from a guy who wants you to know Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton smell like demons, or figuring out how in god’s name to create effective sales pitches for supplements whose testimonials are delivered by a man with the physique and personality of a half-shaved, badly sunburned baby bear, nothing seems all that appealing about punching in at Jones’ bullshit factory for a living.
It isn’t all that surprising, then, that a newly published New York Times Magazine article by former employee Josh Owens about his old gig doesn’t exactly resemble a glowing Glassdoor job review.
Owens’ look back at his time working for Jones is absolutely stuffed with disturbing and wild stories, but most remarkable among them are his recollections of events like times when they would all head “to a private ranch outside Austin to shoot guns.” He recalls one trip in 2014 when Jones arrived later on and “after eating a few handfuls of jalapeño chips…picked up an AR-15 and accidentally fired it in my direction.” Owens remembers that “the bullet hit the ground about 10 feet away from me” and, after one employee got mad about their boss nearly killing Owens, Jones apparently claimed he’d “intentionally fired the gun as a joke.”
Amidst other tales of awful stuff—like an assignment to “visit Muslim-majority communities throughout the United States to investigate what Jones instructed us to call ‘the American Caliphate’”—Owens recalls one particularly vivid example of InfoWars’ office culture. “Late one night, after an extended live broadcast, Jones walked into my office shirtless,” he writes. “This was normal; he removed his shirt frequently around us.” Jones drank some vodka, put on a different shirt, then returned to the office and asked one of Owens co-workers to hit him.
“When the employee refused, Jones got louder, his face redder. ‘Hit me!’ He kept saying it, getting closer each time,” Owens continues. After goading the employee to hit him harder than an initial “weak tap on the shoulder,” Jones took his turn.
“Smirking, he planted his feet, reared back and lunged his body weight forward as his fist connected with the man’s arm. I could hear the dull thud of impact, then a wincing sigh. They traded a few more punches, each time seeming less playful. Jones became wild-eyed, spit flying from his clenched teeth as he exhaled. On his last hit, the sound was different. Wet. I thought I could hear the meat split open in the employee’s arm. Jones roared as he punched a cabinet, denting the door in. A few weeks later, I heard that Jones had broken a video editor’s ribs after playing the same game in a downtown bar.”
If you’re curious how Owens ended up working for InfoWars in the first place, well, he’s forthcoming about how, “at 23, I was vulnerable, angry, and searching for direction” and willing to drop out of film school after winning a contest for new hires because he was, at the time, “fully invested in propagating [Jones’] worldview.” Owens explains the “cinematic verisimilitude” of feeling like Jones’ work was exposing him to the secret forces that would explain the confusing sociopolitical landscape of the era surrounding the end of George W. Bush’s presidency. He also expresses plenty of regret for helping a man he once viewed as “a hero” and writes that the “black mark” left on his resume and “[banishment] into poverty as penance for my transgressions” is deserved.
The entire article is well worth reading for those interested in hearing firsthand accounts of what it’s like to work for a guy who reportedly throws goldfish into trash cans and once tried to “[ban] laughter in the office.” It’s also valuable for just about anyone who wants to know a bit more about how things function behind the scenes of a website that’s sadly become a prominent force in modern American culture.
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42 Comments
The employee shoulda kicked him square in the nuts, instead of the arm…and then quit. What a psycopath.
Wonder if homeboy (Jones) could hack an actual punch to the face. A good one.
Wonder if homeboy (Jones) could hack an actual punch to the face. A good one.
Wonder no more. He cannot. I watched him babble like a child after being knocked silly by a viewer.
https://www.statesman.com/article/20131109/NEWS/311099702
Was this the fight with Space Hitler where Jones’ dad paid everyone off? Or did Jones regularly get his ass beat in parking lots back in the 1990s??
I don’t know how regular of an occurrence it was, but it was deserved. This one was a viewer we called “Diediedie Guy” who was a call-in troll… or maybe it was his buddy. Alex had a habit of telling people to come on over and “TAKE IT OUTSIDE!!!”
This dude took him up on it.
Read the article. I think there’s a real key to understanding his behavior there: he doesn’t act like A) someone who’s a badass, knows he’s a badass and wants other people to know it too… no, his brand of posturing is much more indicative of B) someone who thought he was a badass, had it disproven in real time, was deeply affected by the humiliation, and now will forever have something to prove. The screaming, rage-filled, something-to-prove thing is usually more indicative of B.Also, if nothing else, Jones sounds like the worst drinking buddy in the world.
Oh he’s definitely in the B column. I read the article, and I have personal experience with this sweaty troglodyte. He comes off as someone who applies confidence like an ointment, since he doesn’t produce it naturally. His narcissism is complimented by his lack of self-image. He’s been so absorbed into his act that he only knows how to react for cameras.
That all sounds like exactly what I would expect.
Its frankly amazing the despot Trump didn’t try to appoint Jones Secretary of the Interior, though admittedly Trump was able to find someone just as bad for the post. Always remember, the government (and our fate) is currently in the hands of people as bad as,or worse than, Jones.
Especially since Bannon worked for him.
there’s still time for Jones to join the Trumpocalypse
He’s unofficially on the payroll as Secretary of the Interior…the Interior of Trump’s Ass.
I only liked your comment because I found it delightfully juvenile.
That’s exactly what I was going for! Thank you for the recognition.
I’m starting to think this Alex Jones fellow might not be all that stable.
Trust me, we knew 20 years ago.
the confusing sociopolitical landscape of the era surrounding the end of George W. Bush’s presidencyWhat was so confusing about…? Oh, that’s right. A black dude got into the White House. That was never supposed to happen.
My takeaway here is that Alex Jones is basically Tyler Durden with the physique of Robert Paulson.
Tyler Durden knew how to do something useful though: Make soap.
I doubt Alex Jones can make soap.
I doubt Alex Jones uses soap.
Dude, he smells like ripe undershirts and Irish Spring.
You got the ripe part right.
He definitely makes soap…if by soap you mean doodies in his pants.
He looks to me like Jabba the Hutt unwittingly impregnated a potato patch.
Bizarrely, young Alex Jones looked like a young Jean-Claude Van Damme. I kid you not!https://i.imgur.com/gallery/yagrS
Comparing Asshole Jones to Durden tells me you don’t know the source material.
NOT to be confused with Rob Paulsen. (Just putting that out there.)
Jones apparently claimed he’d “intentionally fired the gun as a joke.”
Pretty sure intentionally shooting a gun at somebody, even if you intend to miss, is a crime. Even in Texas.
Maybe in the People’s Republic of Austin, but not in the real Texas. *spits in spittoon*
Depends on the relative ethnicities of the shooter and shootee.
and if the white one felt threatened (assuming it was the white one that did the shooting)
I think it’s safe to assume that if there were any other colors of people present then the white one holding the gun felt threatened.
Well clearly this is the GOP’s logic in defending the president. Jones was just exercising his 2nd amendment. You can’t prosecute him for that he has a constitutional right to shoot. Joking with someone isn’t a crime. No one was hurt so there is no injury to be criminal. It’s all good.
“It was just a joke! But don’t you dare laugh at it, or you’re fired!”
Jones apparently claimed he’d “intentionally fired the gun as a joke.”I assume the word “snowflake” was involved.I’d like to take another opportunity to plug Knowledge Fight, the podcast dedicated to debunking Alex Jones’ toxic bullshit with well-researched and reasoned rebuttal, humor, and screams of righteous outrage. They’re on a short break right now, so it’s a good time to binge some of their (admittedly daunting) archive.
I liked when Alex was on Fox and Shep Smith would call out his crazy ass ranting.
Second on “Knowledge Fight.” They have done more in-depth research on Jones than any sane person possibly should.
I will never not post about how horrible Alex Jones is. Having worked adjacent to him at the local access station, I was aware of his antics. I was in the studio the night he got into a fistfight with a viewer in the parking lot. Regretfully, the person punching Alex was not me. Read on for laffs.
https://observer.com/2019/04/alex-jones-austin-public-access-tv-origin-story/
https://www.statesman.com/article/20131109/NEWS/311099702
This A Jones is a “coprotaur”.
I had posted elsewhere that ‘toxic masculinity’ is to masculinity as ‘toxic food’ is to food. You’re just poisoning a good thing.
Alex, you gotta lay off the chilli.
“He seemed so stable when he interviewed me for the job.”