Will the Real Alex Jones Please Sit Down and Shutup

I'm glad Robin brought up Alex Jones in his description of the assignment because he is the first person that came to my mind when I learned about the general topic. In particular I will be looking at his story on how the Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax. It is of note that Jones actually admitted he was wrong about this story a day or two ago due to impending defamation lawsuits, but considering the tragic event took place back in December of 2012 I and no one else should let him off the hook for the blatant hurtful bull**** he wrote concerning the matter.

To refresh everyone's memory the Sandy Hook shooting took place on December 14, 2012 when a 20 y.o man walked into Sandy Hook Elementary shortly after killing his mother and proceeded to fatally shoot 20 children ages 6-7 and 6 adult school staff before killing himself.

Mr. Jones saw this story and the garbage started flowing. He claimed that either the shooting did not happen at all or it was staged using actors and the parents of the children were is on it.



His original story then goes on to show pictures of some of the deceased children saying "Look they are still alive". These photos were later demonstrated to simply be old photos taken before the death of the children or just pictures of kids that did not attend Sandy Hook.

So why did Mr. Jones take this line on the story? He said that this was all a left wing hoax to push more strict gun control laws. Using this motive he takes an event where there are no "sides" as everyone should simply be grieving and politicizes it into a left wing right wing issue. He warps the event from a tragedy into a left wing attack on freedom. This serves to created controversy where none exists giving him clicks and notoriety. These clicks then lead to some more fake news articles that say things like look at this glitch or whatever in this footage IT's FAKE creating a small cult following that keeps sharing and posting garbage that resonates with one idiot at a time who then follows the same process keeping the nonsense alive.

This is the doubled edged sword of the internet. It is a great tool that can be used to spread ideas and obtain knowledge, and it puts great power at the fingertips of those that have access. Sadly some people do not use this power wisely. So I implore everyone to fact check yourself, find multiple sources of unbiased information, and call your friends out on the fake news they share because that share button has a lot of power and should not be taken lightly.