You keep talking about “religion” as if the particular American examples from the past couple hundred years are a good barometer for a phenomenon that has been with people apparently since the beginning. I would submit that this is not the case.
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you keep talking
Nope, just shared some links, never replied to you before.
examples from the past couple hundred years are a good barometer
Were people fundamentally different 201 years ago? But I shared the links because that’s what we’re talking about. Recent religions.
I don’t really follow you argument. Are you saying there was something more significant and valid in the deification of ancient emperors ( for example) than Qist deification of their savior figure?
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I am not sure who is behind the original Q post is all that important. What is meaningful is it rehashed content and tactics from people like Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh, and improvisations therefrom.
Q could have been just a gag at first, but the mythology was designed long before to grab revisionist historians and conspiracy types and corral them under the Republican tent. There’s nothing overtly partisan about fearing a global elite cabal kidnapping and brokering children, but you put a partisan spin on it, and it works for you politically.
On election night 2016, Alex Jones got up, teary-eyed, and said “I won” and walked out. That’s taking a lot of credit, but it isn’t completely untrue. Rush Limbaugh also can take a lot of credit for decades of work in the same insipid style.
If we don’t learn from this and find a way to combat it, it will only get worse.
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Huh. Those tripcodes are even lamer than I thought, or else the description of events isn’t very clear.
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They are that lame. They use the old Unix crypt(3) function to generate the tripcode. You know. The thing that has had good cracking tools for decades. Which is why Brennan points out that tripcodes regularly got cracked and that Q’s got cracked over and over. There are even vanity tripcode generators, which are just cracking tools being used to create tripcodes that spell things. It’s terrible, and was a completely incompetent design when the image boards were created.
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Thanks for the podcast tip, I recently was put onto the “it could happen here” podcast by Robert Evans which was excellent.
Do the Q people talk about epstein, who was actually a pedophile smuggling children across countries or is that too based in the real world?
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I read replies since you posted this.
So, I wrote what I did not simply because it was, like, my opinion, man, but because I figured anyone who has followed the logical progression of the insanity of the Q movement would see what I feel as clear and obvious paralells between formative belief systems based in the unfounded, uprovable (through any normal accepted empirical or rational means at least).
I consider that all religion. And yeah- I’ll grant you thats a wide net I cast. But I stand by it.
As far as examples of more lunatic versions of this phenomenon, the Hale Bopp cult (with no evidence, were told that sacrificing themselves would lead to a spaceship for their souls), The Manson Family (who murdered Sharon Tate and others based on completely fabricated stories of a coming race war, and a cult of personality), etc, etc.
If you consider the Q Anon people as of yet just harmless fools on the face of it, their stupidity led an armed man to a non-existent pizza parlor basement ready to kill.
Basically, at the same time I considered the original parallel I drew very straightforward and simple to understand for anyone who can see the consequences of basic irrational human belief systems, I hadn’t considered that there would still be people who subscribed to them on here that could not suspend their own belief system to see what is going on.
So, I’m not here to flame religion. But pointing out the paralells of how what all start as, essentially beliefs based on unfounded unproven truths, no matter how well meaning and benign, has the potential to piss off people still rational to recognize that, even if they are part of one of those systems, which led us here.
To be clear I think religion has purpose so let’s get that argument out of the way. It gives a lot of people hope where they don’t have any. It also does a lot of other things that I’m not going to go into but I’m not going to call it evil if you think that’s where I’m going with this.
That said- there are plenty of benign harmless examples of irrational systems like this- but I never thought I’d see one evolve in real time in front of me, in a discernable way. That’s why I drew the original parallels.
It’s fascinating to see how some create an entire system of completely irrational and unsupported belief systems to prop up their own fragile egos and worldviews out of fear and a need to feel righteous (here- what I DO consider QAnon, but not necessarily all religions)
I just wish they’d snap out of it and come back to s rational reality, because this shit is going to get innocent people killed and lives ruined.
My background in religion?
I have a general background in spotting and questioning unfounded bullshit. That’s my qualifications.
I don’t think you meant poorly, but I can tell from the way you worded your reply it likely wouldn’t matter what qualifications I claimed in any way (though I have some), so I’m going to just be blunt about it.
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Dont forget Satanic Panic
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Sometimes it helps to see the fnords, I know. The best part about pulling the wool over your own eyes is that you get better at seeing when others try to pull their wool over your eyes. 
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They point to Epstein’s friendship with the Clintons as proof that the Democrats’ child trafficking cabal is real. As for Trump’s friendship with Epstein, that can be explained away as Trump going undercover to investigate the cabal.
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At least the John Titor time traveling thing was fun going on 20 years ago by now. But big difference I think. You would read his time traveling tales while not believing a bit of it but would wonder how much will this Titor character get right. These people believe this Q shit whole cloth but not for a view to jovial fascination or entertainment rather for extreme right wing oppression.
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While I do agree that there’s a lot of parallels to be drawn between early religions/cults and qanon, the creation of the Catholic church was when the ‘cult’ of Christianity became an organised (hierarchical) religion.
(Well, to be pedantic, the Catholic church became a singular entity when the Catholic and Othadox churches split in the eleventh century).
I’d identify this evolution (heh) into a ‘proper’ religion to the Council of Nicaea in 325CE, when the various churches got together and was an attempt to agree on what exactly it was that they all believed. Things such as the date of Easter, and exactly which books were considered canon in the bible were debated and decided (yes, there used to be many more gospels than the four we have today).
Qanon might one day have it’s own doctrinal councils, but for now it’s at a similar point as the Christian church was pre-Nicaea. Just a loose conglomeration of people with similar ideas, but no single creed (yet). The Catholic church is an institution, not a cult (it has more in common with a government or a large business).
I’m not saying that qanon is a religion mind. Just that it shares some aspects in how it spreads and the ‘believing of impossible things’ with religions and cults early in their formation.
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A good religious analogy might be the Inquisition or the fall of the Templars. The accusations against the Templars should look very familiar to Q students.
You have people you oppose, and you have a pre-existing mythology of an overwhelmingly powerful conspiracy threatening the overall societal interest. So you work backwards from the facts of the lives of the opposition, finding where the myths fit coincidences and events. Then you re-broadcast your old myths with the new names, taking the old fears and hatreds and giving them a new villain.
Like I said, I think the pertinent fact of Q isn’t really Q at all, or the conspiracies themselves, taken individually. The mythology Q used existed decades before, when Limbaugh, Jones and others started using these stories to pull people into the Republican tent. Q just slapped a label on all that and collated it all.
Motive is really the telling factor in this, and what should be so easily seen through, not the forensics of how they did it.
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Thanks. I never really understood the appeal of podcasts. When I’m working or driving I can’t also listen to someone talking. At least not if I want to hear what they’re saying. And when I’m relaxing I prefer music. Podcasts are always sooo slooow.
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I got a dog last year and I have started listening on walks but other than that, I’m with you. They tend to be like big budget film/tv documentaries: so so so so so so so much exposition. Like a street entertainer giving the pledge before a trick for 15 minutes and then blink and you miss the actual thing.
What works well for me on the other hand is people that you don’t normally hear in the media being given time and space to talk and I subscribe to some local podcasts for that.
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I am not also podcast averse - I read far better than I hear.
Is there a transcript to read somewhere?
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Ugh. I was expecting maybe a working crypto routine used wrong. It wouldn’t stop the operator from capturing the password, and maybe adding a line of code to scramble the “real” Q’s tripcodes.
Instead, it’s massively broken, routinely hacked, and the only assurance is Ron Wakins’ say-so. It’s not even the $5 wrench solution.
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I not an expert, but I understand this was the path of Mormonism. A convicted fraudster started a cult that turned into a religion with millions of adherents today. I don’t think it’s reasonable to guess that all religions came from weird conspiracy cults but I’m pretty sure some of them did.
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I’m really surprised nobody brought up L. Ron and the Scientologists.
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I’ve been resisting. Besides I have a misc grab-bag of other cults.
Trivia: William Riker, cult leader!
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