Why It's So Funny That Paul Joseph Watson Is Flogging Shonky Brain Pills

With Alex Jones' InfoWars brand becoming more and more popular among confused young men who just want to believe that all non-whites are born criminals, it's easy to forget that it's still basically just a glorified prepper blog. It was never meant to be the place people got real news, rather a platform for a screeching, red-faced man with the perfect radio voice to talk graphically about how he's preparing for the certain apocalypse.

You wouldn't know it from his rising fame, but Jones' involvement in Infowars has fallen by the wayside as of late. His lunacy got a little much for people, including his ex-wife, who describes him as a "really unhappy, disturbed person", and is currently embroiled in a custody battle with him.

Whether due to these personal issues or not, Jones' puce mug is only peppered through the recent archive of his YouTube channel. It seems he leaves a lot of the "journalism" to young bucks now. For instance, there's Owen Shroyer, also known as "The Cuck Destroyer", because, verbatim quote: "I face these people en masse, and I make them look like total cucks." Shroyer is of course no wallflower either, saying of his journalistic prowess: "I have facts, I have points, I back myself up. I'm not afraid, either. I'm not gonna back down because people are trying to intimidate me." These broadcasts mostly come in the form of livestreams, out on the beat, in the eye of the storm.

Paul Joseph Watson, another of Jones' InfoWars acolytes, a suicide truth-bomber, is not seen outside very much, or even at all. We've written about PJW a few times on VICE, and he's generally only too happy to respond.

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Paul's anger is rooted in a kind of faux-logical literalism. Take his view that a hatred of Muslims isn't racism because Islam is not a race. Never mind that race is a social construct that's been transformed in different societies to serve different prejudices, or that the causes of Islamophobia are identical to the fear and distrust of racism, or that Islamophobia often comes paired with deep-seated racial prejudices based on skin colour (for example, Sikhs facing Islamophobic abuse). No. The dictionary definition of Islam is a religion – therefore it's not racism. That's the PJW way.

This worldview extends in many directions: he thinks that popular music is bad now, an opinion based in the "fact" that song lyrics are somehow "less intelligent". He thinks Black Lives Matter is racist. He believes every social issue, international crisis, massacre and murder can be understood by selectively chosen tweets, stats, quotes and polls, while ignoring the fact that all of these issues come laden with structural and political context. But of course, context is for cucks who aren't "real men" like the guys on Reddit's The_Donald page.

So imagine my shock when I caught sight of PJW, pillar of the logicians, king of science, bullshit's worst enemy, flogging hooky brain pills on the InfoWars webstore.

The InfoWars webstore is like Holland and Barrett for the kind of mail order dick supplements you'd find in the back pages of a decade-old copy of Razzle. It is full to the brim with eye-wateringly expensive bottles of tat, like the $149.95 (£114) DNA Force, which "helps energise mitochondrial function & sustain healthy cell cycles". They're all called things like Survival Shield X and Anthroplex and Super Male Vitality, and predictably there is a fluoride-free toothpaste on there too.

If the last bastion of truth in the fake-news-riddled dystopia we've found ourselves in says Brain Force works, then, surely, he must be believed? I mean, PJW, the thinking man's thinking man, would never try to dupe the easily-impressed viewers of the War on Info, right?

Sadly, the Sheffield shut-in has let us all down. In August, Buzzfeed sent many samples of various InfoWars supplemental products off to a laboratory to test how cool and good they are for you, including the PJW-endorsed Brain Force. The results were not flattering. Of dietary supplement Silver Bullet, the lab said "there is no evidence that this works". DNA Force? "There's no way to definitively test 'DNA health', so having a claim of supporting DNA and/or mitochondrial function seems far-fetched."

Surely PJW's Brain Force must be good for something no? Well, not according to supplement evaluation site Diets in Review, which says Brain Force "fails to establish itself as a quality nootropic supplement. They cut their one useful ingredient, bacopa monnieri, with cheap stimulants and sedatives that are neither considered healthy nor effective. Alex Jones and Infowars both have an extremely negative reputation within the scientific, medical and business worlds, and their products are considered low-quality in general."

So you're telling me that an opinions-for-hire YouTuber who prides himself on sifting through the fakery of modern media is actually just a shill who sells shonky diet pills to fuck-wits, while in the same breath telling them they're being lied to by everyone they thought they could trust?

Didn't see that one coming. For shame, Paul Joseph Watson! For shame.

@joe_bish