Tim Heidecker on Unlocking Weirder Comedy, and the Popping of the Alex Jones Balloon
- Lauren Lexa Brown
- 3 minutes ago
- 4 min read
A time stamp in media culture that will be hard to outshine.
As Joshua Citarella and Caroline Busta were setting up their latest project, placing Nick Land books amongst miscellaneous viral pharmaceuticals, nestled beside a True Anon tote bag and Red Scare shorts, the news broke that The Onion had purchased Infowars, and that Tim Heidecker would be their new creative director. The timing of this world-imploding announcement was not only the perfect cherry on top of their months of painstaking work, but a time stamp in media culture marking the complete magnetic pole reversal of a landscape where alt-media has planted itself firmly in and amongst legacy media, fertilized like a giant beanstalk, and now looms heavy over the mainstream.
“If internet culture is, like, the apex of the project of globalization, we timestamped it at the very end, where now Infowars is done and Tim Heidecker is the host and was purchased by The Onion.” — Joshua Citarella, via New Models podcast
ADULT SWIM DAYS
Before there was Slushy Noobz and Emergency Intercom, there was Tim Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!. Upon its conception in 2007, the reaction was often disgust — the surrealist, anti-humour comedy of the show had very polarizing effects. Shock-based gags, body fluids, and skits made to repulse audiences made it a good Christian American parents' nightmare, but a cool kid born in ‘94’s favorite thing to watch. If you’re unfamiliar with Tim’s sketch work, you’ll likely recognize him from the viral “it’s free real estate” meme. The resurgence of this meme in 2016 was being used left and right, mainly in the context of colonization — its Google searches peaked in November 2025, when Israel’s attacks on Palestine weighed heavily in the news cycle. The breakthrough of Tim and Eric’s fringe comedy sketch into mainstream culture was an intriguing foreshadowing of what was to come — a glimmer of what the future held for alternative artists and comedians.
Cartoon Network’s channel, Adult Swim, hesitantly championed the duo's quirks and oddball absurdities. The lo-fi, highly saturated visuals — what the kids today might call “liminal”, and what kids back then called “random” — fit in nicely with the channel's other bizarre offerings like Aqua Teen Hunger Force. The show was wholly unique, however. “Awesome Show” fed off the deepest bowels of human discomfort, with fake advertising shot to look like early cable television, and surrealist sketches akin to VHS footage you might find in a New Mexican gas station bathroom.
So, how did Tim manage to become — for all intents and purposes — the creative overlord of the most prolific conservative media corp today, when only 16 years ago he was acting as a child-clown salesman and breeder, defecating in bedpans and having co-stars dissect it, consuming his own vomit on camera (more than once), and suckling milk out of Eric Wareheim's chest? You might think it’s due to him getting older, growing up, or perhaps leaving behind his juvenile antics of the early aughts. But he was already 30 years old when “Awesome Show” premiered — already graduated from Temple University film school, where he met Wareheim. This is something else, something nobody has done before, but most of all, this is the consequence of funny men channeling the power of their masculinity into something productive, rewarding, and entertaining — the pig has grown wings and left the building.
“Awesome Show” didn’t so much one-up the semen-drinking, pie-breeding, horse-masturbating gross-out comedies of the ’90s and early 2000s. It obliterated them. Excrement, ejaculate, tears, blood, sweat weren’t used as gags or stunts, but as the fundamental elements of the demented comic world the duo created.” — John Semly
“There’s something about the cigarette juice skit that literally made me vomit." — Reddit comment
THE ONION
The Onion, an American digital media company that has been delivering knee-slapping satire since 1988, has catered to a generally leftist audience since its inception. Up until 2024, it had been owned by G/O Media, a large holding company that also houses Clickhole. The Onion is now owned by Global Tetrahedon, a Ben Collins-owned company which, as you may learn upon reading their site, is essentially a meme in and of itself. The United States’ most precious export is news, and wars are fought over media just like they are for oil — but instead of maiming civilians with AKs, the weapon of choice in our post-literate society tends to be visuals that, when met with the exhausted eyes of average Joes housed in food deserts, paint a mosaic of bombastic narratives lacking any nuance whatsoever.
July 2 marked the first official Onion as InfoWars livestream, with over 2,880 people tuned in across platforms such as YouTube and Instagram. The implications of this massive media overhaul are likely to make waves across the world — Heidecker and the team plan to donate proceeds of their merch sales to the families of Sandy Hook victims, a horrific mass-shooting event that Alex Jones famously denies ever happened. It’s reported that they already have $100K planned to donate, even though the takeover isn’t officially complete.
In an exclusive quote provided to HALOSCOPE, Heidecker commented on the comedy being chronically underplatformed and underfunded:
“A lot of what people watch now is shaped by algorithms and low-cost formats. If you give comedians real support, production, time, you start to get weirder, more interesting work. That’s what we want to unlock.”
It’s hard to say how far the show will reach for sure–news outlets like New York Daily have covered the story, but often only refer to Tim as an “Alex Jones impersonator”. Regardless, an institution like The Onion taking the reins from a notorious far-right media conglomerate is a piece of history that should be taught to school children starting yesterday. As a pseudo-millennial, the notion of reviving Adult Swim on the internet is wonderfully exciting. As I reflect on Heidecker’s career, I feel a sense of involuntary paternal pride. This is an event I just know my old communications professor would have us study in a course called “Media and Mayhem” or something. Let us all rejoice, taking pause to acknowledge that male comedians can indeed still contribute to the greater good. 🌀
Lauren Lexa Brown is a writer, medical office assistant, and the editor-in-chief of Heart Note Press. She collects and studies media — both physical and digital — specifically focusing on visual culture, fragrance, psychology, and anthropology.
