Headlines from satirical website The Onion on Thursday: “New dating site suggests people you already know but thought you were too good for.” “Trump Boys Are Fighting Over Who Gets to Lead Foreign Policy Meetings.” “This is why I decided to buy Infowars.”

Only one has the ring of truth. Sort of.

The author of the Infowars article, Bryce P. Tetraeder, does not actually exist. And the Onion has no plans to invest in scholarships for promising cult leaders.

But the Onion’s purchase of Alex Jones’ conspiracy theory-drenched media empire at a bankruptcy auction tied to lawsuits by the families of the Sandy Hook shooting victims is very real — an attempt to combat falsehoods with humor and a who-did-have-thunk-it development in an already somewhat incredible year. On Thursday, The Onion immediately shut down Infowars and plans to relaunch it in January as a parody of conspiracy theorists.

“Our goal in a few years is for people to think of Infowars as the funniest and dumbest website out there,” said Ben Collins, CEO of Onion. “It used to be the dumbest website out there.”

The purchase, for an undisclosed sum, was backed by the Sandy Hook families, who received nearly $1.5 billion in lawsuits against Jones over his false claims that the 2012 Connecticut elementary school shootings were a hoax.

The new Infowars will be a satire on the theories Jones put forward, which were themselves so absurd that they could have seemed satirical if they hadn’t caused real-life damage. The development ends a tentacle of a loose network of podcasters, TikTok influencers and others whose content continually provokes and enrages people, Collins said. He called Jones a minor character in a universe of fear-based media.

“They have had a free pass so far and we don’t think that is fair,” he said.

At the very least, he said, the Onion hopes to bring some fun back to the Internet, to offset years of doom scrolling.

In Collins, who once covered disinformation for NBC News, the new venture has a leader uniquely suited to what is being attempted, said Dale Beran, who made this year’s Netflix documentary “The Anti-Social Network” on the subject.

Founded as a newspaper in 1988, The Onion has undergone several ownership changes and was purchased earlier this year by a group that includes Jeff Lawson, co-founder of the software company Twilio. Since then, Beran says, “it feels like it has been given new life.”

Done right, a satirical site about conspiracy theories and those who traffic in them could be having a historic moment, just as comedian Stephen Colbert did when his Comedy Central show, “The Colbert Report,” mocked pomposity a decade and more ago conservative TV talk show hosts.

And what will happen if some of Jones’s casual fans, who didn’t follow the news of the bankruptcy auction, log onto Infowars in a few months and find the Onion’s new creation? Probably not much, said Beran, who suggested it’s unlikely there’s much overlap between people drawn to conspiracy theories and those who want to mock them.

Conspiracy theories about the Onion’s purchase of Infowars appeared online just hours after it was announced.

“There is no chance that this point of sale, which has not been relevant for years, can pay for this purchase on its own. Who was really behind this?” the website Zeee Media, which bills itself as “one of the most trusted, uncensored sources of information in Australia,” posted on X.

Jones himself hastily posted a video aimed at his fans on Thursday. “This is an all-out attack on freedom of expression,” he said. “The deep state is completely out of control.”

Every time a prominent website spreading misinformation is shut down, there is an impact. Still, the business model of reaching people who want to be outraged is still viable, Beran said. Another disinformation expert suggested that Jones would move on quickly, and that his fans would go with him.

“As long as there are people willing to join, he will find new outlets,” said Yotam Ophir, head of the Media Effects, Misinformation and Extremism Lab at the University at Buffalo. “If anything, the Onion trolling and lawsuits against him will make some of his most devoted fans even more certain of his justice, seeing him as a martyr to free speech.”

At the very least, the Onion purchase offered a moment of zen for liberals who have had quite a rough week following Donald Trump’s election victory and the Republican Party’s victory in Congress.

“This is bad karma turned good,” wrote Timothy W. Larson, who describes himself on X as an “unabashed progressive.” “I love it.”

___

Associated Press Dave Collins in Hartford, Conn., contributed to this report. David Bauder writes about media for the AP. Follow him up http://x.com/dbauder.