The mainstream long dismissed conspiracy promoters as harmless comic figures

Evidence

As on the Conspira-Sea, my first reaction was to treat the exchange as a lark. It was the kind of interaction you might have with a harmless, nutty radio shock jock, because that’s what Alex Jones was, for many years: a guy shouting into a microphone, warning that the government was trying to make everyone gay through covert chemical warfare, the homosexuality agents leaching into our water supply and from our plastic bottles. (“They’re turning the freaking frogs gay!” he famously shouted. The clip quickly went viral and provoked mass hilarity on Twitter.) — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 16

Categorization

• XREF: Relevant backdrop for vault claims about how authoritarian/conspiracy politics was underestimated and then normalized.