Is this ad appropriate for Boingboing? I didn’t click it, does it go to an Alex Jones website?
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I think you’re on to something; because even though I hate to admit it, the tin foil folks have influenced my BFF in real life, and believing in multiple (and sometimes contradictory) conspiracy theories hasn’t done her any good. She’s been in the same ‘holding pattern’ in her life for years now, and it’s hard to witness.
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Won’t matter. It’s been clear since day one that the whole thing was fake, some form or larping or just trolling but the idiots that believe in it are in too deep now. Sunken costs, or whatever, I’m sure they’ll chock up any reporting on who was actually behind QAnon to fakenews and the deep-state silencing Q.
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Whatever the fuck this is, it doesn’t meet Semiotix’s Acid Test of Conspiracy Theoryness, which holds that the true essence of a conspiracy theory is that it is a vehicle to assert one’s superior intelligence over all others, including and especially other believers.
I formed this theory* in the aftermath of 9/11, when I noticed that the flame wars erupting between Truthers and regular folks were pretty half-hearted, but the intra-Truther flame wars were spectacular. Also, a lot of Truthers didn’t really seem all that bothered by the existence of the shadowy Jewish/CIA/UN/Venezuelan/alien conspiracy. In fact, within a month or two of 9/11, most of the conspiracists were about as blasé as it was possible to be about 3,000 people dead. They only really got passionate (genuinely so, I think; trolling wasn’t as sophisticated back then) when people quibbled with them. Not rejected them, but proposed alternate theories or brought up “evidence” they weren’t interested in. Ultimately it became pretty clear that every Truther post was just another way of saying “I alone, in all of the universe, was clever enough to see completely through their trick, and I wish the rest of you would shut up and let me take a victory lap.”
The Q thing (which is pretty obviously a troll of its own followers, but never mind) is the opposite. It’s hero-worship of the mythical deep state undercover agent who parcels out the breadcrumbs. The people who swallow it aren’t “theorizing” at all; they’re just passively consuming it. If anything, they seem to be jostling a little bit with one another over who can be more credulous, although I think most of those people are just trying to “own the libs” by baiting someone into calling out how dumb they’re being. But if there are any true Q believers, they’re just watching it like a soap opera.
Never thought I’d miss the Truthers, but at least they put some effort into their thing. (Actually, that’s not fair–these guys are much, much, much less dangerous than proper conspiracists.)
*and I’m the smartest person ever for noticing!
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Yep. any attempt to disprove it is, itself, proof that it is important enough for the deep state to try to eliminate it.
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Chaos neutral vs. chaos stupid?
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Would that be the Dumb Energy ad, or the USB Light Strip ad? 
Living in a world where causality emerges from 7 billion endless random walks is exhausting and terrifying. The desire to ascribe agency to something- a conspiracy, elves, aliens, god- is powerful medicine. Combine that with an Internet that’s a continuously morphing stereogram and you have a recipe for a world where facts are irrelevant. Stare long enough and a kind of truth will appear.
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Those particular “serious” allegations were and are deeply sketchy. The details more closely resemble pizza gate then they do any real world human trafficking/kiddy idling ring I’ve heard of. The people initially involved were a patent attorney with no experience in the subject, who’s never met his own client. And a guy known for generating bs lawsuits and generating deeply sketchy stories to sell to the tabloids. And he was apparently attempting to sell the story, it only started to appear in media after he failed to get paid for it. Neither the accuser. Nor the claimed witness seems to have met anyone in person. No names attached to it. Noone was ever able to find simple corroboration. Like confirming the people involved were even in NY at the time. That the witness had actually worked for Trump etc.
And once Gloria Allred got involved, And mainstream press started to pay attention to all petered out and disappeared.
It’s possible there was something there. But sufficient details never emerged. And all the trappings scream conspiracy land. And it’s most still a thing. And was heavily pushed. By the small group of conspiracy pushing. Radical left online publications. And deeply unreliable places like the parts of Huffington Post that have no editorial oversight.
People were dismissing and questioning those accusations long before qanon or even pizzagate. Because it was pretty sketchy.
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In 1999, Roberto Bui, Giovanni Cattabriga, Federico Guglielmi, and Luca Di Meo, writing under the name “Luther Blissett,” published an Italian novel called Q .
Gracious, it’s life imitating Foucault’s Pendulum.
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Life imitating Foucault’s Pendulum imitating life?
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\begin{monotone sarcasm}
This will end well.
\end{monotone sarcasm}
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What do you mean by this? Do you mean that there are no people that hack, prank and socially engineer under the auspices of ‘Anonymous’? Because if your objection is just that the ensemble is not organized or cohesive, then that (and the explication of “Anonymous declares war” as a figure of speech for “some members urge a collective action”) is explained in Mr. Doctorow’s article.
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Anonymous declares war on Qanon
Where or where have they been hiding these past 2 years?
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That’s all the people running that twitter account do, run a twitter account on which they make ridiculous pronouncements and once in a while create a video with distorted voice over audio and lots of neat video game inspired motion graphics. Anonymous, this mythical distributed collective of hackers who allegedly expose injustice blah blah blah doesn’t exist. It’s just a made up image. “They” whoever “they” are, are completely ineffective. Remember that time when they vowed to expose all the law enforcement and elected officials with ties to the KKK and other white supremacy groups? LOL, yeah, get back to me on that.
Here are some examples, from this very site, of what a stupid waste of time it is to cover “Anonymous”:
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What I mean by that is that around every six to twelve months or so, some gullible journos write a headline such as the above, “Anonymous declares war on…” or “Anonymous vows to expose …” and exactly nothing happens. “Anonymous” promised to expose all the KKK and other white supremacists in police forces as well as in government after the Michael Brown shooting. Zilch. Bupkis. Anonymous was supposed to get their hands on Trump’s tax returns and release them, ahahahahaa, yeah, ok. Remember when Anonymous told ISIS to disband? Anonymous is just bunch of trollies on the internet making neat videos with cool sound effects, who issue sternly worded twitter threats and accomplish exactly nothing. So, Anonymous as we are led to believe they are, the powerful shadowy decentralized collective of hackers, doesn’t exist. Anonymous, the bullshit twitter based group of trollies, does.
Here are some examples, from this very site, of what a stupid waste of time it is to cover “Anonymous”:
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Theism is at its root, an attempt to explain natural processes through empathy: (thing) happend because (God/Gods/Bavarian Illuminati) wanted it to happen, and the reason they wanted it is (some version of a human desire: jealousy, love, anger etc)
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It doesn’t make the trolls smarter, it makes them the same trolls as always pretending to always be smarter no matter what dumb stuff they said in the past. I mean on election night it was flooded with people bashing Trump and talking about how stupid MAGA was, because it’s more important to be on the latest trend and anonymity and lack of community means you can pretend it was never you on the wrong side.
And the “leftist” portion of /pol/ are just as myopic and cool with white nationalism as everything else. Even if it was a prank at first by someone knowingly choosing the novel Q instead of knowing the security clearance, the torch was carried far beyond that initial post and became a real thing keeping the pizzagate stuff alive since it was all the same people involved basically.
And the 30 year old boomer meme itself hasn’t spread very far, because it is extremely dumb. I mean, below the normal low bar.
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