Right. This is one of the many situations where I wish the writer educated themselves on the subject of conspiracy theories and extreme belief before applying their own expertise.
Q is hardly unique on any of these fronts. It’s not that Q Anon has been “gamified” and this makes it uniquely dangerous. Or explains why it’s been so popular.
It’s that gaming, and a lot of narrative storytelling relies on a lot of the same psychology and human quirks as conspiracy theories do.
That could be as innocuous as people look for patterns, so we’ll insert a pattern that implies how to get that door open. Or it can be as manipulative and hollow as your average “mystery box” TV series.
And for conspiracy theories and psuedo science they’ve always operated a lot like Fandoms. With a lot of the same features and rising in tandem with (and often crossing over with) the development of early organized Fandom.
It’s an interesting way of looking at the subject. Especially given how far right groups have weaponized certain fandoms. But it’s hardly a revelation.
That’s entirely normal. You poke the conspiracy end of anti-vax a bit harder and it’s the same thing. Bill gates is gonna chip you for reasons, sinister drug companies seek to control you etc. And there’s no small crossover between Q and anti-vax.
Q is largely another flavor of the Protocols of The Elders of Zion derived conspiracy theories that date back more than a century. Secret World Government, suspicious power groups like the Illuminati, or in the original a sinister Jewish Cabal. These don’t have a clear point or practical result binding them together and never did. The point, such as it is, is to demonize an other and elevate the believer by demonstrating SECRET KNOWLEDGE and framing them as a VERY IMPORTANT AND SMART positive actor in the world.
These things are never internally consistent and even where they might have a clear, practical end goal (as with certain alt med claims) it’s often deliberately down played or hidden. Cryptozoology for example has huge following among young earth creationist, a lot of it is funded and promoted by them even when the “research” is coming from more secular enthusiasts. The unspoken (in public) practical goal/assumption is that finding a live dinosaur or the like will some how disprove evolution. There’s also significant cross over into the obsession with Biblical Giants and the search for proof of them as proof of God or the Bible. With Bigfoot being a major thing among Mormons, his discovery intended to “prove” Mormon interpretations and stories about Niphilem. Which is a big part of what lead to that DNA study a few years back where “real” Bigfoot DNA totes contained Angel DNA, you guys.
Anti-vaxxers stick to the script, though. It’s always about vaccines. Their paranoid rambling may focus on discredited doctors, or autism worries from their favorite blogger or Facebook page, or they may be concerned that vaccines are deliberately poisonous and designed to track you. But it’s always vaccines. Same with climate-change denial, anti-moon-landing, and so on. Anti-moon-landers, for example, don’t lose the thread and start talking about how Roosevelt knew that Pearl harbor was going to be attacked and deliberately failed to take action, so we could go to war, etc. Or I suppose, if you have those folks in there, they just believe in conspiracy theories in general, and don’t really have a special axe to grind regarding the moon landing.
QAnon may have a surface, entry point of a global pedophile ring, but their concerns clearly range all over the place to where some Qs don’t even remember or know what the original story was about. It’s just any conservative nonsense that you can throw at the wall, and see if it sticks.
I am not sure if Q-anon is much different, or any more/less harmful, than religion in general. Belief in a power that provides hard to understand information about how to live and decide things that only the “in” crowd get, and that are neither internally or externally consistent. If you believe that the universe was created by god(s), then you will believe almost anything.
I love the idea that the QAnon’ers have been telling themselves for months to “stick to the plan” (without knowing what “the plan” is, of course). And now, they have to mentally negotiate the fact that Trump is not even going to be in government anymore to defeat the deep state and all the Democrat child molesters.
Of course, we cannot count them out. The entire religion of christianity erupted into full bloom because the original disciples had to reorganize a plan that seemingly ended after the abrupt, unforeseen passing of their first leader.
And the adrenochrome is what hooks this into a long history of related deadly gossip/rumor, the Blood Libel. It may not be overtly religious, but it does partake of ritual elements and the harvesting of bodily fluids. Not for making matza in this case, but as a recreational drug. Chilling!
Solid article. A couple details I wish it had mentioned:
It uses “Follow the money” as an example of how fictional contacts talk. I wish it had gone one farther and noted that that line is from a fictionalized account of actual events. The real Deep Throat never said “Follow the money”; the line does not appear in the book version of All the President’s Men, only the movie version (script by William Goldman).
And the article uses The X-Files’ Cigarette Smoking Man as an example of a fictional Man in Black who leaves breadcrumbs. I’ll add that CSM himself is like a metaphor for the entire convoluted mythology of The X-Files: the way Kim Manners told the story, CSM wasn’t even in the original conception of the series; William B Davis was hired as an extra for the pilot, he stood in the background smoking a cigarette and looking sinister, and they decided to give him a bigger role later.
The point where I started to fall out of love with X-Files during its original run was perhaps a “eureka” moment itself – it was the point where I realized there wasn’t really any grand plan, the writers were just making it up as they went along. The truth was never out there; there was never going to be any real resolution, just layer after layer of complexity. Nothing meant anything.
Isn’t “Jim Stewartson” a different person to “Reed Berkowitz”? The original post doesn’t make any of these specific claims as far as I saw (but anyway, what was giving me a headache was the use of conspiracy-theory rhetoric in pushing back on conspiracy theories).
Belbo, Diotallevi and Casaubon become submerged in occult manuscripts that draw flimsy connections between historical events, and have the idea to develop their own as a game. Using Belbo’s personal computer, with Abulafia and Ardenti’s manuscript as a foundation, the three create what they call “The Plan” using a program that rearranges text at random. The Plan becomes an intricate web of conspiracy theories about the Templars and their goal to reshape the world using “telluric currents”, which are focused at the Foucault pendulum.
They actually do. And with that specific claim too.
The moon landing claims are deeply tied to the sort of secret world government “them” style of conspiracy theory that Q is inherently rooted in. So are claims about Pearl Harbor as a false flag/being deliberately allowed in order to “trick” us into WWII (because secret JEWS!). All the extra " conservative nonsense" attached to Q these days are old existing ideas that have been around in their current formats for decades at a minimum. They’ve all already crossed over with different iterations of a global “them”.
These things tend to have levels. Levels of claim complexity and rediculousness in tandem with levels of dedication. Scientology is an excellent example of monitizing this. The largest, newest group of believers tend to believe the up front, most basic and socially acceptable claims. As you move down the ladder. More and more extreme claims and beliefs are introduced. With smaller, but more dedicated groups of people accepting them
In a distributed group like Q a given follower’s beliefs may be a mishmash of different related ideas from outside or from different levels or flavors of the system.
This becomes an avenue for both boot strapping new (really additional old) ideas into the system. But also a potential vector for factionalization and infighting.
For recruitment, or public promotion, only the first level claims are put out there.
Listen to the UFO guy for a bit and it might sound like they just want to check in case UFOs are real regardless of what they are.
Hang out a little longer and you’ll learn about Nancy Pelosi’s secret base near the entrance to the Hollow Earth. The non-physical Sasquatch entitie’s roll as our ambassador to the trans-dimentional Tall Greys who seek to protect us from Nancy and the Reptiloids from the Hollow Earth.
What’s different about Q Anon is how quickly it’s been boot strapped into the main stream. And the level to which it’s transformed into political movement, rather than cult group or fandom. That just hasn’t happened in a while.
But the ways it did are not sudden or unique to Q Anon, there’s been a long slow process of building and promoting this sort of thing for political gain. And among certain generations at least an erosion of the ability to vet information, and confidence in reliable sources.
Yeah, I feel like that has to be deliberate, a nudge to get the audience to recognize the technique they’re using. But I agree, I’d rather they didn’t.
I have two childhood friends who were predisposed to paranoid schizophrenia and both developed it after intense cannabis and marijuana consumption. I am not saying the latter causes it, only that it is a trigger of something pre-existing. I wonder if cannabis and/or marijuana consumption, by heightening the brain functions awareness in a certain manner, can foster feelings of paranoia and lead to ‘conspiracism’ like Qanon. In a group of friends who got stuck in that QA k-hole, 6 on 9 of them have been heavy consumers for several years. Or maybe I am the paranoid. =D
I was thinking about the Eco model of conspiracy theories too. It doesn’t really work here. In Foucoult’s Pendalum the dudes make up a conspiracy theory and that basically causes the conspiracy to become a real thing. Here Q has made up a conspiracy theory and that has caused a bunch of people to believe the conspiracy theory but the conspiracy that Q made up is that “secretly behind the scenes the Trump administration is doing great things.” No theory of semiotics is going to make that happen. I guess the best case you could make for it is that Q said “Secret things are going on and it will make Trump win the next election.” In that case, if Trump had won, then you could say that the creation of the conspiracy theory may have in part lead to its becoming true. Thankfully, that didn’t happen.
I always thought that was the point: the number 23 is significant because we make it significant. It’s not about the number 23, it’s about the power of the human mind to create something out of nothing.
So, what I am getting from all this is QAnon is, basically, the inmates running the asylum with a little help from a pig farming/t-shirt entrepreneur. Does that sum it up? How banal.
It is tempting to point out that, if you believe all the secret pizza pedo tunnels / Turmp-is-secretly-human horseshit, what difference does a goddamn election make?
But engaging like that can only lead to burst blood vessels. The only way you could have a constructive conversation with fhese people would be to slap them like the woman from Airplane until they started acting like someone with a kindergarten diploma
Yep. I expect to see these people go on thinking that Trump is somehow working behind the scenes to stop the satanist pedophiles from eating pizza long after he is dead. The only reason that the election is important is that it seems to be the coherently disprovable prediction that Q made, namely that Trump would win reelection in a landslide. All the other things, “He’s going to arrest all the democrats” etc. seemed to have some sort of escape clause on them. Even if Trump can tell himself that he only lost because of cheating, it really undercuts the story that these people were telling themselves about three dimensional chess. The only thing they will be able to tell themselves now is that Trump somehow lost the election on purpose to (??) expose the satanists? something?
