I concur; allowing that kind of misinfo to remain on their platform could open Jack & Co up to potential liability which outweighs the fiscal benefits of enabling such assholes.
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Ah so that was their work? I remember that whole thing, but wasn’t aware this was QAnon
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It got there quickly, but there was a period where it might have been a joke or just a far right conspiracy. It took a little while to move to group religious fervor.
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Origin
A person identifying as “Q Clearance Patriot” first appeared on the /pol/ board of 4chan on October 28, 2017, posting messages in a thread titled “Calm Before the Storm”,[10] which was a reference to Trump’s cryptic description of a gathering of United States military leaders he attended as “the calm before the storm”.[10][44] “The Storm” is QAnon parlance for an imminent event when thousands of alleged suspects will be arrested, imprisoned and executed.[45] Q later moved to 8chan, citing concerns that the 4chan board had been “infiltrated”.[46]
If it started on /pol/, it was far-right from the beginning.
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Far right immediately, but the cult aspect came later. In the early posts it could have been just another discarded /pol post or even a more traditional grift of some sort.
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The cult aspect was around in other forms before Qanon, see Tommy Robinson’s protests at British courts (while conveniently forgetting that some of his allies are also convicted child rapists, maybe he thinks that’s ok because they are white “Christians”). He was convicted for contempt of court several months before the first Qanon post.
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QAnon is the most OK Boomer thing to ever OK Boomer.
A bunch of Boomers that fought learning e-mail for years and installed every malware toolbar that they ran across finally found 4Chan and started believing the first BS that they came across.
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And better be quick at it before from a cult it morphs into a recognized religion.
You know… “You don’t get rich writing crazy conspiracy theories on Twitter. If you want to get rich, you start a religion.”
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Boomers have generally been computer literate from the beginning of personal computing. I think you’re confusing boomers with the group before them, the silent generation (1928-1945). However, my FIL is of that generation and has been using a computer since 1980. Be careful of ageist stereotypes.
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I’m Gen-X, and I have been using computers since the early 80’s. I think you are the one mistaken about generations that were using computers. Boomers that were ‘computer literate from the beginning of personal computing’ were definitely in the minority.
I stand by what I said, all the Q-Anons I know IRL are Boomers that needed 10+ years to understand e-mail, spent years bitching about how they didn’t need a fancy smart phone because all they wanted was a cell phone that made calls, or my favorite, Boomers that kinda know how to use the internet but still don’t understand how to switch the source input on their TV’s. (I currently have to listen to my wife bitch about all the Boomer librarians she works with that refuse to lean Outlook. You would think that librarians would be better with tech, but there is still a sizable portion of near retirement librarians that can barely do much more then email.)
It’s exactly the same principle as the Nigerian Prince scam’s being full of misspellings to weed out people who are to smart to fall for the scams. Boomers that put off learning about tech are the prime target for for falling for Q-Anon nonsense. That ‘bunch of Boomers’, or should I have said ‘group of Boomers’ are pretty much the most ‘OK Boomer’ group to ‘OK Boomer’
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I’m technically a boomer and I had to learn basic computer programming in my 1979 high school math class, because one my teachers had worked at JPL and the high school received a grant for a main frame computer. My older siblings and their friends were the ones who majored in computer science/engineering and who worked for HP, IBM, and Apple.
Furthermore, there were MANY jobs that required the use of PCs even before 1980. Who were these employees? Not a Gen-X.
The point I’m trying to make is that many older boomers were buying up personal computers and regularly using them, and using them at work, too. They didn’t suddenly go, “Oh, no! I learned DOS but now I can’t even figure out email.” The Nigerian prince trope is funny until you realize that young people were being duped into sending naked pictures of themselves to pedophiles. There really isn’t a age limit to doing stupid shit on the internet.
Well, maybe it’s the people you associate with. I know zero QAnons, but the sound bites I see appear to show many people younger than me.
Anecdotal evidence doesn’t further your argument any more than mine. I’m simply pointing out that you’re stereotyping.
Uh huh. Sure thing.
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No. It is not suppressing free speech. They are free to spew their dangerous, democracy ending bile on plenty of other platforms.
Also, if you’re “not aware” of Qanon at this point, maybe start paying better attention to what’s happening in the world right now.
All this!!!
Plenty of Gen Xers and Millennials are into this conspiracy theory. It’s not a generational issue, it’s more related to your political orientation.
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First one that tried to talk to me about “red pills” and “the Great Awakening” and Pepe the Frog and the Clinton / Soros connection was a fellow GenXer. He got progressively worse over time and I blocked his ass two years ago the instant he brought up “a possible need for a culling of some sort”.
Like…that topic is not even remotely fit for even a “speculative discussion” — and this fool brought it up with a damn Kale without even thinking. Buh bye!
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I’m totally not surprised. I grew up in a small town and knew at least some folks in our little outsiders group (back in the 90s) that had aligned with the far right via right wing skinhead politics.
One success the alt-right has had has been positioning themselves as the real “counter culture” or real “punks”… in other words, as the cultural outsiders, and that’s drawn in a lot of people alienated from mainstream culture. That’s a standard tactic since the 80s at least to pull in alienated white men via “outsider” culture. William Pierce was especially good at it, bringing in tons of people via music.
The whole mindset of “we just got to wait for the olds to die out” is not going to help us here. We have to stop being so lazy and reflexive in our thinking and actually see things as they are instead of seeing things through a lens of tropes and cultural assumptions pushed down our throat by popular culture.
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Yup, that’s why I avoided jumping into the Ok Boomer discussion up thread.
In hindsight, my former friend is a classic outsider “alpha nerd*” type (like me) but was too young to experience the punk vs Nazi stuff in the 80s. He viewed himself and those he deigned to associate with as way above the norm in every way. We’d recommend books and music to each other constantly.
When he enthusiastically recommended ‘The Bell Curve’ to me, the first thing that popped out of my mouth was “No! Not that shit again!!” followed by urging him to read Stephen Jay Gould’s ‘The Mismeasure of Man’ and then I’d be happy to discuss both books together. Of course, he never got around to reading it.
I tried to have reasonable conversations with him on these topics. I tried to have any kind of conversation at all about music, movies, etc (as friends do) - but somehow we always ended up on some red pill adjacent bullshit.
By the time he brought up “culling” it was a relief to jettison him from my circle of friends and life.
Also a relief to type all that up, I’ve been processing that for awhile. Thanks for reading it!
- a nerd with social skills
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That may be due to their intellect and not their age. As others have said, the boomers invented the information age.
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I’ve often heard people say it started as a joke that got out of hand, or it was a trolley that started taking itself sincerely, but like all attempts to hand-wave away the alt-right, this is surely a weird form of wishful thinking. As though people feel better about the explanation that it can’t have been sincere from the start because nobody is that delusional and also influential. Right? Right? crickets
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Hm. Easy enough to change hashtags.
By Marianna Spring Specialist disinformation reporter, BBC News
I guess that’s a thing now.
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I know that people say that being a boomer is about a state of mind, not an age, but we need a different word to describe that state of mind that isn’t ageist.
Also, like a lot of things associated with boomers, the information age was started by the silent generation.
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They all ignore that if it came from /pol/ it doesn’t matter. The only people who are active there are the alt-right and NazBols, who are alt-right but with socialism for white cis-het people (so it’s not actually socialism).
If it was a joke it was a far right joke and if they were a trolley they are a far right trolley.
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