Martha Stewart

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I’m surprised raving entrepreneur Glenn Beck didn’t snap up Hannidate, re-brand it, and add it to his growing media-apparel–survivalist gear empire.

You know who does have a radio show and a dating service?

Alex Jones.

Alex Jones is that guy you think must be an actor portraying a hysterical, paranoid, cliché-spewing talk radio host in some minor satirical movie you’ve stumbled upon, until you realize after a few minutes that he’s not acting. (Maybe.)

Jones believes “a cabal of international bankers, transnational corporations and one-world globalists are taking America down the garden path to destruction sooooo sleeepeeee zzzzzzzzz.” That’s not me being over-the-top snarky (except for that last bit). I’m quoting one of his admirers.

He shouts about this stuff and more on the radio and at his InfoWars website. In fairness, about half of what he says sounds somewhat sensible if you strip out the opera buffa “precious bodily fluids” Bilderbergers boilerplate.

When a friend sent me a link to the “Dating Freedom Lovers” forum at Jones’s online fan community, Planet InfoWars, I figured I’d sign up, do some catfishing, and then write about my no-doubt-hilarious experience.

But masquerading as someone else online, let alone making believe I was single, pricked at my conscience. (Yes, I was raised by nuns.)

Plus I’m not an entirely unknown quantity at InfoWars for some reason; under my true identity I might be exposed in short order as that “shill for the new world order” who was “working for the death of America.”

I’d also envisioned Jones’s “dating service” as boasting hundreds of members, a place where I could make mischief somewhat under the radar, not the twenty-one-member forum it turned out to be.

Finally, I couldn’t bring myself to make fun of these folks. Sure, they use the cultish catchword “awake” a lot”€”“My favorite movie is The Matrix and being awake and telling others is important to me””€”and they duly credit Jones for busting their snooze button.

A long-haired bassist pictured holding an affronted cat writes, “I’m from FEMA Region 9 (a.k.a. Big Bear City, California.)” Not a few express a desire to relocate off the grid. A very young-looking Goth girl signs off, “Jesse Ventura 2016!”

And that’s about it.

I came, I saw, I chickened out.

Their vulnerability disarmed my sarcasm, seizing it right out of my cold, dead soul.

Even troofers need someone to luf.