Monday, March 3, 2014

5 Things I've noticed about... Prisonplanet and Infowars

Prisonplanet and Infowars. Both are Alex Jones's main websites, and both are two of the largest conspiracy theorist websites in the world.

Now there are a lot of things that have been said about these sites, and after taking a look at these two sites I've noticed quite a lot of things about them, which I have narrowed down to five things.

So here are five things I've notice Prisonplanet and Infowars:

5. There are a lot of ads on the sites.

I have no problems with any websites having advertisements on them, and with the size of the websites that Prisonplanet and Infowars are it's necessary for these sites to have advertisements on them inorder to make money to both pay people maintain the sites, as well as to pay other employees... and also to make Alex Jones money.

The sites not only have your ordinary, random ads that try to look like news stories, but also ads by sponsors of the sites with products or services that is geared towards the typical fans of Alex Jones (i.e. conspiracy theorists), or it's just advertisements for books and videos and other products that Alex Jones has created himself... or atleast he claims to have created. And ofcourse there are also ads for Alex Jones's radio show.

There are also articles on those those sites as well, not just ads, but the thing about that is...

4. Alex Jones doesn't write a lot of articles on those sites.

On any given day if you go to Infowars and Prisonplanet you'll find a whole bunch of articles on there, what you hardly ever see however are articles written by Alex Jones. Infact seeing an article on there that was written by Alex Jones is more rare than seeing an article on there that actually tells the truth instead of being a manipulative form of propaganda.

Not only does Alex Jones not write a whole bunch of article on his sites, but neither does his staff. Many of the articles on those sites are actually from other websites, some of which mainly promote conspiracy theories and pseudoscience, and some are from legitimate news sites.

Even when someone there does write an original article, they always seem to do this one thing...

3. They cherry pick stuff.

Most of the articles on these two sites that are written by actual staff members of Alex Jones's tend to be just cherry picked from other legitimate news articles, with parts of the legitimate news articles being taken apart and having pieces of it taken out of context, and then the writers ad in their own comments to make it sound like the original article agrees with their point of view, even if it doesn't. Or they trash the original article completely and make it sound far worse than what it actually is, especially if the article says something negative about conspiracy theories or conspiracy theorists.

Even the articles that are completely and totally original still read like they're cherry picked. This is probably because they are written in such a way that it's obviously intended to manipulate it's readers into believing in the two sites' obscure world views. Now this isn't to much of a surprise, and that's mostly because...

2. They're stereotypical conspiracy theorist websites.

Whenever I'm asked about a conspiracy theorist website the first thing that comes to mind are these two websites, because not only are they two of the largest conspiracy theorist websites out there, they are also two of the oldest.

Besides just the other stuff that I mention above (cherry picked and manipulative articles) both sites also do a lot of other things you would find on other stereotypical conspiracy theorist websites, such as posting Youtube videos that are often manipulative and irrelevant (although they usually make these videos themselves), and has a comments section which tends to be a gathering place for other conspiracy theorists with even wilder conspiracy theories, and can be pretty hostile towards people who don't share their views.

Even the lay out of the sites themselves seems just like what you would find on a well made conspiracy theorist website.

1. They're shrines to Alex Jones.

Ever page that I go to on either one of these websites has either a picture of Alex Jones on them, or atleast has his name somewhere on the page. Even though these are his websites, this just seems a bit egotistical to me.

Some people might argue that those websites are about promoting the "truth", which couldn't be further from the truth. The only thing these websites do is promote whatever Alex Jones wants to promote and wants you to believe, and ultimately promotes Alex Jones himself.

These websites are not alternative news sites like they try to make themselves out to be. They're just shrines to feed Alex Jones's ego and wallet.

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