Last month, conspiracy website InfoWars.com was viewed just under 13 million times. In the past, InfoWars has received over thirty million views a month from people around the world who hang on every word of Alex Jones’ unhinged rants.

Despite his continued popularity, Jones’ empire is currently on the brink of collapse as he faces lawsuits, bans from major social media platforms, and now a mutiny by his fellow conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi.

To help contextualize the challenges Jones faces today, below is a (far from exhaustive) timeline of his improbable rise to fame, beginning with his first foray into media:

1994 — Alex Jones begins his career with a live, call-in public-access TV show in Austin Texas “at the tender age of 20.”

1996 — Jones hosts his first radio show, titled “The Final Edition” on KJFK in Austin.

1999 — Jones is fired from KJFK despite attracting plenty of listeners because his “viewpoints made the show hard to sell to advertisers,” according to the station operations manager.

2000 — Jones begins broadcasting his show online at InfoWars.com and briefly flirts with a run for the Texas House.

2001 — Jones’ show airs on 63 stations in the U.S. and has a larger online audience than Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh combined.

6/8/06 — Jones is detained and questioned for four hours by Canadian authorities at the Ottawa International Airport. The Canadian government does not comment on the incident, and Jones tells local news “it takes two to tango. I could have handled it better.”

5/4/11 — InfoWars publishes an article titled, “Top government insider: Bin Laden died in 2001, 9/11 a false flag.”

7/28/12 — InfoWars publishes an article titled, “Overwhelming evidence mounts indicating Colorado shooting staged.”

9/24/14 — InfoWars publishes an article titled, “FBI Says no one killed at Sandy Hook”

12/2/15 — Presidential candidate Donald Trump appears on InfoWars and tells Jones “Your reputation is amazing, I will not let you down” and, “I think we’ll be speaking a lot.”

11/5/16 — InfoWars publishes a video featuring Jones titled “Pizzagate is real.” (Pizzagate is a conspiracy alleging that Secretary Clinton, her Campaign Manager, and other Democratic Party officials are running a child sex slavery cartel out of a pizza restaurant in D.C.)

12/4/16 — A man armed with a semi-automatic rifle fires off three rounds in Comet Ping Pong, the D.C. restaurant that was the focus of the Pizzagate conspiracy.

5/17/17 — During a pre-trial hearing for a custody battle with his ex-wife, Jones’ lawyer, attempting to differentiate between the host’s online persona and his genuine personality, claims “he’s playing a character.”

5/22/17 — The White House grants InfoWars Washington Bureau Chief Jerome Corsi a temporary press pass.

8/5/18 — Apple bans Jones’ content from their platforms. Facebook, Spotify, Youtube, and Twitter follow soon after.

9/5/18 — Following a Congressional hearing on social media, Jones almost provokes a fight with Senator Marco Rubio.

9/7/18 — The New York Times reports that Jones’ supplement sales have netted tens of millions of dollars in revenue. The report also counts five defamation suits pending against Jones, two workplace discrimination and harassment suits, a fraud and product liability case, and a divorce and custody battle costing at least $4 million.

1/12/19 — Judge Barbara Bellis rules that InfoWars must turn over documents “including letters, memos, emails and text messages” to the families of children killed at Sandy Hook who are suing Jones.

2/13/19 — Judge Barbara Bellis rules that Alex Jones and other InfoWars employees will be deposed in the defamation lawsuit filed by the families of children killed at Sandy Hook.

3/7/19 — Jerome Corsi, former InfoWars Washington Bureau Chief and prominent “birther” files a lawsuit against Jones alleging defamation and intimidation.

During his interview with Rogan, Jones appeared to be in a state of genuine distress as he decried his perceived victimization at the hands of the mainstream media.

Like a child who only regrets getting caught and still doesn’t understand what they did wrong, the once-renowned conspiracy theorist expressed his inability to comprehend why calling an elementary school shooting fake might have real life consequences.

Reduced to a shell of his former right-wing provocateur and Trump whisperer persona, Jones is in exile, banished from the elusive algorithms of walled-gardens and relegated to the role of the internet’s crazy uncle whose endless emails we mark as spam.

Now the only other famous person who will talk to Jones is Joe Rogan and a man who claimed President Obama was born in Kenya is accusing him of being disingenuous. If that’s not rock bottom, I don’t know what is.

It doesn’t take a professional conspiracy theorist to figure out why Jones pulled an Icarus — he thought he had a winning formula and was determined to take it as far as it would go.

For Jones, outrageous conspiracies serve the dual purpose of drawing in those who are susceptible to misinformation, thereby allowing him to establish himself as an arbiter of truth for them, while also generating enough outrage among the general public that he stays relevant in mainstream media.

Unfortunately for Jones but fortunately for our national mental health, the bigger his audience became, the bigger the target on his back grew. For example — if I decide to start sporting a tinfoil hat and spewing defamatory conspiracy theories on Youtube tomorrow, sure you can sue me, but I don’t exactly have a treasure trove of assets to seize.

Suing 1994 Alex Jones would have been largely pointless, but there’s far more incentive for both attorneys and aggrieved parents to pursue legal action against 2019 Alex Jones.

In the end, I would chalk Jones’ downfall up to stubbornness and potential psychosis. At numerous points throughout his career, he could have attempted to moderate his message, assimilated into the universe of right-wing media pundits, and still earned plenty of money.

But that simply wasn’t Jones’ brand. The same restlessness and contrarianism that fueled his rise to prominence rendered him unwilling to contemplate the real-life consequences of his rhetoric, whether in the form of a shooting at a pizza restaurant or conspiracy theorists accusing parents whose children were murdered of being crisis actors.

I’d like to think that maybe once he loses everything, Jones will reflect on the damage he’s done, but I wouldn’t bet on it.