This design is pure inside joke, although I think the image of three rich cartoon characters hanging out in a tropical beach-side hot tub is surreal enough on its own to be amusing. To fully understand this inside joke, it's necessary to talk about Alex Jones and even more necessary to talk about Knowledge Fight.
Alex Jones is a radio host and internet media creator who is far too complex a figure to encapsulate in a couple of sentences. Suffice here to say that he is an extreme far right fundamentalist who is hell bent on preaching a bizarre mix of anti-globalism (read "Jew" for "globalist"), post-tribulation rapture, inter-dimensional psychic vampires, the demonization (literally) of all Democrats and liberals, rank bigotry around immigration, misogyny, Islamophobia, rabid gun fetishism, and a knee-jerk conspiracy mindset that frames everything that makes him look bad as a false flag operation. Not to mention his long standing anti-vax bullshit and the fact that he makes money by fear mongering and then selling supplements and survival food to his uncritical (one could say brainwashed) audience. He's also been carrying water for Trump hard for a very long time. He is a complete asshole, and a dangerous one due to his influence in the right-wing media sphere.
This is where Knowledge Fight comes in, a podcast hosted by Dan and Jordan, which undertakes the mission of fact checking Alex Jones as much as possible. This is Dan doing all the research, outlining each show and putting all the clips together, and Jordan joining him for the actual show, reacting and discussing. Note that "reacting" is a massive understatement, in that Jordan is the very definition of hyperbolic. The two hosts foil each other extremely well in this regard, this Dan's mellow baritone counterpointed by Jordan's frenetic, incredulous and intensely emotional energy. It helps a lot that they both have experience working in stand-up comedy and are both genuinely funny and entertaining.
Not surprisingly, they prove (where "prove" means using actual citations of actual sources and original materials) over and over again that Alex is a manipulative and self-aggrandizing liar whose primary motivation is money (although guns sneak in there as a hot second). After three years of producing an amazing amount of content - usually around 6 hours a week, give or take - they are still going strong, with examinations not only of Alex's current behaviour, but also delving back into the past to investigate key events that have shaped Alex's narrative. It is fair to say that Knowledge Fight is the preeminent authority on Alex Jones, and that's saying something.
With over a thousand hours of content produced by two comedians, there are going to be endless inside jokes and meta-references. "There are four ways to learn," "Life is very fragile," "Purple penguins," "Raptor Princesses," and many more. "3 globalists in a hot tub" is an oldie but a goodie, spawned by another one of Alex's rambling personal and obviously fictitious anecdotes that have a tendency to develop and elaborate over time. In this story, Alex is on vacation with his family and visits the hotel's hot tub only to encounter a globalist who reviles him in a very demon-y way and then stares at him with immobile hatred for 20 minutes before stalking away. It's a great, painfully transparent story, very typical of Alex, and the boys have made a lot of hay out of it. Over time, their referencing of the story has also evolved, so now it is invariably referred to as the time Alex met three globalists in a hot tub instead of just one.
I took that story/reference and combined it with another of Alex's common talking points, which is that the globalists have tried to buy his soul for an amount of money that varies, but is often around ten million dollars. So, three globalists in a hot tub who want to buy your soul for $10,000,000. Make the globalists famously wealthy cartoon characters, throw in a little Herbalife and boom, the result is the graphic under discussion.
Unfortunately, although I love this graphic very much and would like nothing more than to put it on a t-shirt and also make it Public Domain, it does feature three characters who are definitely not in the Public Domain. I have placed it in the Commons under an Attribution/NonCommercial/ShareAlike license. You can find it on my Flickr page here.
You can find Knowledge Fight wherever you find podcasts. You can find Alex Jones on his media "empire," InfoWars, but approach with caution and the help of Dan and Jordan - they are by far the best available guides for that treacherous path.
Return to Portfolio
Return to Low Humour