The best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves.
November 21, 2014 6:33 PM   Subscribe

 
I don't know...
posted by TwelveTwo at 6:49 PM on November 21, 2014


If you want to dive a bit deeper into this with people holding back giggles there is an episode of Blame It On Outer Space on this.
posted by munchingzombie at 6:51 PM on November 21, 2014 [1 favorite]


I feel like I'm missing some subtext or something. Is "Alex Jones" supposed to be a good outcome for Bill Hicks? Are we supposed to believe that Bill Hicks didn't want to be a comic, but instead was really shooting for that fringey radio/tv show host spot? That seems a cruel life to wish on Bill Hicks.

I mean, yes, both Hicks and Jones have strong opinions, and they think the system is out to get us, and it's all run by rich, foreign interlopers who are coming to steal our freedoms and our lives. But I think that similarity is far more easily explained by simply pointing out that both of those guys are Texans. Have you ever been to Texas? It's crazy down there.
posted by DGStieber at 6:56 PM on November 21, 2014 [17 favorites]


Thumbs up for Blame It On Outer Space. Look for the episode where Jesse Ventura guests.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 7:02 PM on November 21, 2014 [1 favorite]


No no its clear and obvious with anyone with eyes to see, this is the longest con in showbiz.

We're through the looking glass people
posted by The Whelk at 7:06 PM on November 21, 2014 [1 favorite]


FOOLS! This is just want lizard people want you to think!
posted by leotrotsky at 7:08 PM on November 21, 2014 [3 favorites]


Or is he???
posted by Sys Rq at 7:08 PM on November 21, 2014 [2 favorites]


Is "Alex Jones" supposed to be a good outcome for Bill Hicks?

"Alex Jones" isn't really a good outcome for anyone (except in strictly financial terms for Alex Jones), IMO. But Hicks was starting to dabble in Waco/David Koresh trutherism before he died, so it's not exactly an unlikely one.

Also, WRT Texans, ha ha, but in fact I've met some wonderful and sane Texans, including the late great Molly Ivins. Annise Parker is a native.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:09 PM on November 21, 2014 [1 favorite]


in b4 delete!
posted by telstar at 7:13 PM on November 21, 2014 [3 favorites]


I think we all learned something in this thread.
posted by TwelveTwo at 7:17 PM on November 21, 2014 [3 favorites]


This just takes the attention away from the fact that Glenn Beck is Andy Kaufman!!!
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:18 PM on November 21, 2014 [19 favorites]




This would be the darkest timeline.
posted by chainlinkspiral at 7:24 PM on November 21, 2014 [6 favorites]


...and I was really hoping that one of them could be Douglas Adams.
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:24 PM on November 21, 2014


Bill Hicks is a corpse.

Alex Jones will be, eventually.

So, like, close enough...right?
posted by Quasimike at 7:34 PM on November 21, 2014 [7 favorites]


My bottom right cuspid protrudes .... OMG I'M ALEX HICKS.
posted by photoslob at 7:39 PM on November 21, 2014 [1 favorite]


This is such a lovely microcosm of the conspiracy theory world. It's delightful. It's got horrible production values, but incredible amounts of effort and a paranoid imagination spinning a fanciful tale on the basis of a single harmony between two entirely disparate things (in this case, surely, it is the relatively similar face shape of hicks and jones and their sometimes quite similar voices). Most of all, it confirms what the conspiracy-minded paranoid believed all along at the most fundamental level: that there are no leaks in the rigorous determination of the world by human intention and purposes. If Jones were real, and not himself a part of the Grand Conspiracy, then this would be an obvious failure of the Grand Conspiracy, which ought to have done something about him by now. So, clearly, he is part of it himself.

To believe anything else would mean to accept that the fucked up state of the world is more accident, incompetence and happenstance (to be sure, all motivated by greedy grasping) than human intention and planning. What horror.

Really, this is perfect.
posted by dis_integration at 7:41 PM on November 21, 2014 [6 favorites]


Alex Jones might wish he were Bill Hicks, but every time he looks in the mirror, nope, he's still a douche.
posted by Catblack at 7:44 PM on November 21, 2014 [7 favorites]


I still choose to believe Ron Shock. And we still miss you, Bill.
posted by ryanshepard at 7:49 PM on November 21, 2014 [1 favorite]


My bet is that both of them are really Andy Kaufman.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 7:51 PM on November 21, 2014 [3 favorites]


Actually, they're both Beau Bridges.
posted by effbot at 8:05 PM on November 21, 2014 [2 favorites]


I still don't understand why Bill Hicks gets a pass.

He's mean, a bully and a misogynist.
posted by vapidave at 8:11 PM on November 21, 2014 [1 favorite]


Man, I am so glad people remember Ron Shock. I remember laughing my ass off at his standup back during the early 90s stand-up boom. (SAST represent!) Thing is, for years, I couldn't remember his name, and the internet was no help, because I thought it was "Rick Shock" and of course didn't turn up anything. Anyways, a couple years back he died, and someone wrote a post about it somewhere, and I was like, holy fuck, that's him! So I looked up his stuff on youtube and lo and behold, he really was fucking hilarious. And I'm wondering, what happened? Why wasn't this guy famous?

No, seriously, why wasn't he famous?
posted by evil otto at 8:11 PM on November 21, 2014 [1 favorite]


He's mean, a bully and a misogynist.

I'm not giving Hicks a free pass - he had issues, and some of what he said was indefensible. But he could also be fantastically funny, had a great sense of stagecraft and timing, and was only 32 when he died. I miss him mainly for what he might have become when he matured, and when he had enough exposure to the world to see the edges of cruelty and ignorance in his comedy.

And maybe he might never have become that person, and would have just become bitter and easy to dismiss - but we'll never know.

No, seriously, why wasn't he famous?

It's a premium episode, but this interview with Marc Maron makes it sound like a combination of bad timing, cussedness, personal problems, and a basic unwillingness to play the show business game.
posted by ryanshepard at 8:20 PM on November 21, 2014 [2 favorites]


But Hicks was starting to dabble in Waco/David Koresh trutherism before he died, so it's not exactly an unlikely one.

Wait, what does this mean, I'm wondering? Waco was a black-eye on the US, perpetrated by the US govt (as far as I know). Yeah, Koresh was a crazy religious nutjob, stockpiling weapons, but unfortunately that's really not terribly unusual. Or is 'trutherism' a word meaning something that's critical of the US govt (in which case, the juries that saw evidence on this matter and soundly criticized the government could be accused of this).

Waco is to the right what Cointelpro is to the left - a real bad thing the government did that's a warning about what the government could do again (and get away with).
posted by el io at 8:40 PM on November 21, 2014 [2 favorites]


Ron Shock.
Never heard of him.
Looked on YouTube,
he is god damned hysterical.
He makes me think of Lenny Bruce.
posted by carping demon at 9:30 PM on November 21, 2014 [3 favorites]


If you didn't watch the first video, you should. When it got to the YouTube stuff for a while I was wondering if maybe this was really good satire, but it's not. It would take, like, fifteen seconds of Googling about infringement takedowns on YT to make it clear that this was all an automated process based upon a fingerprint sound match of a copyrighted recording and a claim by the copyright holder -- but, no, the vagaries of YouTube takedowns and contesting them that a bazillion other people have experienced is a nefarious plot spefically to silence these guys and that the copyright holder is Warner Music Group means that because it used to be owned by Time-Warner and because a reporter for Alex Jones had some relationship to Time-Warner means that, of course, the shadowy conspiracy between the false-flag operation of Alex Jones is really behind all this.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 10:05 PM on November 21, 2014 [1 favorite]


This is reminiscent of and/or an homage to the classic Undeniable Proof that Paul McCartney was replaced with a Look-Alike.
posted by Hot Pastrami! at 10:24 PM on November 21, 2014 [1 favorite]


Or is he???
posted by Pope Guilty at 11:16 PM on November 21, 2014 [2 favorites]


This video is hilarious. One of the ways they "prove" Bill Hicks as Alex Jones is a CIA operative is his backtracking on statements of Michelle Obama's true male gender - which clearly he would only do if his handlers were displeased. I really love this. I'm still not sure if it's a joke or not.
posted by xammerboy at 1:30 AM on November 22, 2014


I'm still not sure if it's a joke or not.

If you look at the other videos in the account I'd lean more towards mentally unbalanced than a joke. If it's a joke, it's a tiny part of a very large time-consuming joke that resembles someone with serious mental issues.
posted by el io at 3:16 AM on November 22, 2014 [1 favorite]


I don't know who's crazier. Jones, or the person who made this video.
The weirdest part for me was Joan Rivers actually calling Obama gay, and Michelle transgender.
posted by QueerAngel28 at 5:01 AM on November 22, 2014


Alex Jones was a lot cooler when he was that kooky guy ranting into bullhorns that Richard Linklater would put in his films as a shorthand for "Austin's got ALL types of weirdos."
posted by KingEdRa at 6:03 AM on November 22, 2014 [6 favorites]


Let this be a warning. If you spend your time, emulating someone who sucks Satan's cock every night on stage, sooner or later, you might find that you've turned into someone who actually does that very same thing.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 8:15 AM on November 22, 2014


When I lived in Austin, there was a cable access program called "The Show with No Name." They were sort of like a pre-Youtube clearing house for bizarre cult videos that people would trade in VHS. Things like Heavy Metal Parking Lot, the original Jackass demo video (a couple of years before the show started on MTV), all that sort of stuff. They were also huge Hicks fans and would show tons of clips of his stand-up. They were on either right before or right after Alex Jones' show -- this was long before infowars.com, even before Linklater's Waking Life, when he was just a local Austin kook with his own show on cable access -- and they had a long-running feud with him. I think he might have even gotten into a fistfight with the host of Show with No Name. Anyway, this video would break that guy's poor little heart.

My other Alex Jones story, which I may have told previously on Metafilter: Opening night of Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace. Friends and I had scored tickets to the very first midnight showing. Sitting right behind me in the audience was Alex Jones with his date. The commercial before the film was a cartoon of the THX logo slowly coming into view, with the famous slow build-up of the surround sound, and then the logo "shorts out" and a little red cartoon droid comes out to repair it. Just a cute little cartoon, whatever. When the red robot comes out, Jones yells, "FIX IT, YOU COMMIE!" I'm sure that really impressed his date.
posted by Saxon Kane at 8:20 AM on November 22, 2014 [5 favorites]


If you look at the other videos in the account I'd lean more towards mentally unbalanced than a joke.

This "person X is actually person Y who's actually played by person Z" thing is pretty big in conspiracy circles; there's an endless supply of these people in the "Sandy Hook never happened" and other false flag crowds, and a totally incoherent guy like "DallasGoldBug" (I posted an example earlier) has plenty of supporters -- just look at the comments for this Vice article about him, for example. If there's not already an ICD/DSM code for this, they should add one.
posted by effbot at 8:34 AM on November 22, 2014 [1 favorite]


el io: Wait, what does this mean, I'm wondering?

This video is what I'm referring to. Some cable call-in show that is supposedly the last interview that Hicks did, right when he's getting into his theory that one of the Bradley armored vehicles had a flamethrower in the turret.

is 'trutherism' a word meaning something that's critical of the US govt

There are plenty of people who were and are strongly critical of the government's actions in the Waco siege without looking at a few seconds of blurry footage and seeing napalm. Just as you could be strongly critical of the Bush Administration's actions before and after 9/11 without believing that they brought down the Twin Towers with thermite.
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:05 AM on November 22, 2014


Saxon Kane: "My other Alex Jones story, which I may have told previously on Metafilter: Opening night of Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace. Friends and I had scored tickets to the very first midnight showing. Sitting right behind me in the audience was Alex Jones with his date. The commercial before the film was a cartoon of the THX logo slowly coming into view, with the famous slow build-up of the surround sound, and then the logo "shorts out" and a little red cartoon droid comes out to repair it. Just a cute little cartoon, whatever. When the red robot comes out, Jones yells, "FIX IT, YOU COMMIE!" I'm sure that really impressed his date."

I don't know if you told this story before, but a friend of mine told similar stories and basically about how everyone knew the guy was jacked up on coke all the time back in the day, and a story similar to this... Maybe I'm conflating the two stories, or maybe I shared you story on my LJ and my friend mentioned the coked up bit....

Seriously... I honestly don't know how much of his own recycled Urin-Ade the guy drinks and how much is all a show and how much he just is straight up coked out with no sense of logic or proportion. It seems the latter, but deep down there is always this hope, this faint hope that maybe, just maybe he has some sanity deep inside of him screaming and begging to be let out from the demonic captors that is "Alex Jones' Mind"
posted by symbioid at 9:46 AM on November 22, 2014


Around when I was in college, a friend of a friend was Alex Jones' girlfriend for a few years. I don't have any good stories about Jones to share, but she was this crazy girl who often did stunts for PETA (she once talked her way in the Four Seasons so she could throw a dead raccoon on Anna Wintour's plate, calling her "Fur Hag").

It was always a mindfuck to think that she and Jones were an item, but there it was.
posted by fungible at 11:22 AM on November 22, 2014


Oh shit, a quick google and I see she became his wife! His Jewish wife, that is. How controversial.

I guess I haven't been following this dude for a while. My loss. Not.
posted by fungible at 11:26 AM on November 22, 2014


Alex Jones might wish he were Bill Hicks, but every time he looks in the mirror, nope, he's still a douche.

I've been on a major Chomsky binge recently, and I listened to Jones's interview with him. It's surprising how much they agreed on until gun control came up. Then Jones yelled at him for a few minutes, bounced him from the show, and spent the rest of the segment angrily belittling him as a shill for the New World Order. (At least I think he did... I stoped listening after a few minutes.)
posted by fivebells at 8:46 AM on November 23, 2014


His Jewish wife, that is. How controversial.

Ugh. Why is it that the most dedicated critics of the big name kooks always manage to out-kook them?
posted by Sys Rq at 8:58 AM on November 23, 2014


Why is it that the most dedicated critics of the big name kooks always manage to out-kook them?

Well, this post is about conspiracy theorists thinking that other conspiracy theorists are conspiracies themselves, so it kind of fits the theme. That site is just pure antisemitic bile, though, mixed with a large dose of pro-nazi rantings in the comments. The moderators may want to nofollow/donotlink the link.
posted by effbot at 10:19 AM on November 23, 2014


And why did our MeFi Moderator Overlords delete THIS? Oh. Double. Okay.
posted by oneswellfoop at 6:59 PM on November 26, 2014


We need to investigate claims that Ghostride the Whip and ennui.bz are false identities being portrayed by a single government-hired crisis poster.
posted by Pope Guilty at 8:25 PM on November 26, 2014


Hmm. It would explain why,though he is three years younger than me, Jones looks like he's at least ten years older (Hicks was about ten years older than me.) So hmm.



Actually, Alex Jones looks like a pig's scrotum wearing a bad wig.
posted by louche mustachio at 6:57 AM on November 30, 2014


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