5 ms·

What is QAnon? Explaining the bizarre rightwing conspiracy theory

9 points by Ours90 8y ago

foolzcrow 8y ago
Let me guess censorship of free speech is your solution.
api 8y ago
I do think QAnon is something more than just some basement dweller or troll. There's just a little bit too much of it and there are too many cases where it's seemed to have information ahead of time that few could have possessed. It's clearly some kind of propaganda operation, but being anonymous it could be literally anyone. It could be any intelligence agency on Earth, any think tank or political PR company, any radical group, or even Trump's own people. Unfortunately most of these 'alt' types who think they're too smart and savvy to believe anything in the mainstream merely switch from mindlessly believing the MSM to mindlessly believing anything 'alt' that blows the right dog whistles. They won't trust the news but they will trust an anonymous serial poster on an imageboard. Somehow the fact that the 'alt' media and its orbit are just another kind of media with its own set of agendas is lost on them. In a world saturated with propaganda where any kind of hoax with any kind of text, audio, or video evidence can be manufactured the provenance of information becomes critical. If information has no provenance it may as well not exist unless you have a large amount of other evidence to corroborate it. In other words rumors are noise unless there's enough independent evidence to render them redundant. There's a saying in the intelligence world about this: "interesting if true." It's said of things that probably are not true and require extensive verification. This becomes doubly important when you consider priming effects. If I tell you Donald Trump has AIDS (I just made that up on the spot as a random example), all the sudden your brain will start looking for and cherry picking evidence for this possibility. Is his occasional rambling a side effect of anti-HIV drugs? Is his hair loss a result of those same medications? The mind will run away with it. We are pattern recognition machines. I think priming like this is part of the QAnon act. He/she/it throws out a lot of BS and occasional nuggets of truth -- because disinformation is not effective without some truth to bait the hook -- and then relies on your brain to fill in the gaps. I'm sure QAnon is monitoring those same imageboards and forums where it drops its info and where it's discussed, so it uses its fans to crowdsource its own material and close the feedback loop.
- deleted 8y ago
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- nickthemagicman 8y ago
  My boss really believes in this qanon person and loves Alex Jones and I'm trying to understand why. You mentioned there's info qanon had ahead if time. Any examples of this you would mind providing?
  - api 8y ago
    I don't have any off the cuff but examples I've heard include future newspaper headlines and policy announcements. This leads me to suspect that QAnon is managed by Trump's organization or those closely allied with it, perhaps with or without the knowledge of Trump himself. I'll offer my own take on the appeal of these things. Implausible conspiracy theories have appeal today because our authorities have collectively done too many things that erode public trust in them. Specific examples include the Iraq war and its false pretense, the inequitable and likely corrupt bank bailout following the 2008 financial crisis, and significant neglect of the economic well being of large numbers of people and (perhaps more importantly) large geographic areas of the country. When people lose faith in existing authorities they start asking who they can trust. Demagogues tend to emerge that offer easy answers and scapegoats. IMHO the ultimate blame for all this falls on our establishments including our government, media, and elite educational institutions. Trust is hard to earn and easy to squander. Decades of greed and incompetence are threatening the trust basis of our entire society.
heywire 8y ago
The podcast Reply All had an episode on this as well.

9 points by Ours90 8y ago

Let me guess censorship of free speech is your solution.

api 8y ago

I do think QAnon is something more than just some basement dweller or troll. There's just a little bit too much of it and there are too many cases where it's seemed to have information ahead of time that few could have possessed. It's clearly some kind of propaganda operation, but being anonymous it could be literally anyone. It could be any intelligence agency on Earth, any think tank or political PR company, any radical group, or even Trump's own people. Unfortunately most of these 'alt' types who think they're too smart and savvy to believe anything in the mainstream merely switch from mindlessly believing the MSM to mindlessly believing anything 'alt' that blows the right dog whistles. They won't trust the news but they will trust an anonymous serial poster on an imageboard. Somehow the fact that the 'alt' media and its orbit are just another kind of media with its own set of agendas is lost on them. In a world saturated with propaganda where any kind of hoax with any kind of text, audio, or video evidence can be manufactured the provenance of information becomes critical. If information has no provenance it may as well not exist unless you have a large amount of other evidence to corroborate it. In other words rumors are noise unless there's enough independent evidence to render them redundant. There's a saying in the intelligence world about this: "interesting if true." It's said of things that probably are not true and require extensive verification. This becomes doubly important when you consider priming effects. If I tell you Donald Trump has AIDS (I just made that up on the spot as a random example), all the sudden your brain will start looking for and cherry picking evidence for this possibility. Is his occasional rambling a side effect of anti-HIV drugs? Is his hair loss a result of those same medications? The mind will run away with it. We are pattern recognition machines. I think priming like this is part of the QAnon act. He/she/it throws out a lot of BS and occasional nuggets of truth -- because disinformation is not effective without some truth to bait the hook -- and then relies on your brain to fill in the gaps. I'm sure QAnon is monitoring those same imageboards and forums where it drops its info and where it's discussed, so it uses its fans to crowdsource its own material and close the feedback loop.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
nickthemagicman 8y ago
My boss really believes in this qanon person and loves Alex Jones and I'm trying to understand why. You mentioned there's info qanon had ahead if time. Any examples of this you would mind providing?
- api 8y ago
  I don't have any off the cuff but examples I've heard include future newspaper headlines and policy announcements. This leads me to suspect that QAnon is managed by Trump's organization or those closely allied with it, perhaps with or without the knowledge of Trump himself. I'll offer my own take on the appeal of these things. Implausible conspiracy theories have appeal today because our authorities have collectively done too many things that erode public trust in them. Specific examples include the Iraq war and its false pretense, the inequitable and likely corrupt bank bailout following the 2008 financial crisis, and significant neglect of the economic well being of large numbers of people and (perhaps more importantly) large geographic areas of the country. When people lose faith in existing authorities they start asking who they can trust. Demagogues tend to emerge that offer easy answers and scapegoats. IMHO the ultimate blame for all this falls on our establishments including our government, media, and elite educational institutions. Trust is hard to earn and easy to squander. Decades of greed and incompetence are threatening the trust basis of our entire society.

heywire 8y ago

The podcast Reply All had an episode on this as well.