Infowars was up for auction to help cover the $1.5 billion conspiracy theorist Alex Jones owes for defaming the families of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting victims.

When reality becomes stranger than satire, maybe the satirists can teach us something. The Onion confirmed on Thursday that its parent company bought Infowars, the disgraced purveyor of Sandy Hook misinformation and vendor of pseudoscience supplements.

As the outlandish nature of his false claims grew, so did his media empire, with annual revenues of up to $80 million, and a fanbase that at his height listened to him on more than 100 radio