7 ms·

QAnon High Priest Was Just Trolling Away as a Citigroup Tech Executive

36 points by mrtedbear 6y ago

vnchr 6y ago
Who here has actually read these “QAnon” posts? Any thoughts?
- mindcrime 6y ago
  I've never read any, mainly because everything I've read about them leads me to rate their likely veracity as somewhere considerably below the writings of Erich von Däniken, Graham Hancock, and Jim Marrs.
  - vnchr 6y ago
    Yeah. I don’t understand the massive cross-platform banning of what amounts to some random political commentary/conspiracy. I found the most recent post[1], seems benign enough: January 15, 2020: 1. USA CHINA Phase I deal executed [China bad day] 2. Impeachment articles released by Pelosi _walked [delivered] to Senate [attack v POTUS?][coordinated/planned for a specific day?] 3. 1st C19 case lands @ Seattle-Tacoma Airport [attack v POTUS?] Mathematical probability [same day][natural vs controlled?] WHO BENEFITS THE MOST? Evil surrounds us. Q [1] https://8kun.top/qresearch/res/10957492.html#10957834 https://8kun.top/qresearch/res/10957492.html#10957834
    - ashtonbaker 6y ago
      > random political commentary/conspiracy > seems benign enough Shouldn't these be evaluated in the context of the actual real world consequences of this conspiracy theory?
    - eli_gottlieb 6y ago
      I think that's only benign if you've got your nonsense detectors calibrated properly. If you're a paranoiac, that's candy.
    - catsdanxe 6y ago
      You can ask yourself why was Unity2020 banned as well.
    - NotSammyHagar 6y ago
      It's because time after time people have committed violent acts like showing up at the pizza place in dc with guns, but many more claims to be violent in the future.
- catsdanxe 6y ago
  The general consensus is that it's a psyop run by some intelligence agency.
  - voldacar 6y ago
    It's far too wild, bizarre and creative to be from an intelligence agency. I've followed it off and on for a few years and there's just no way that any pentagon boardroom dweller could have thought up half of this shit. Also, whoever qanon is, they don't understand cryptography and were unable to figure out PGP, based on some old posts on 8chan before that site went down. I assume it's just the work of some masterful troll
    - perrylaj 6y ago
      You may be correct, but you also have to remember that a HUGE amount of the US's intelligence has been outsourced and contracted. Maybe that has pulled back some since Snowden (I have no idea), but there are still hundreds of thousands of contractors working on behalf of US military, intelligence, etc.
- Fjolsvith 6y ago
  They're more accessible than content at bloombergquint.com.
- klondike_ 6y ago
  It's a good example of the Nostradamus effect. Just make more and more vague predictions until one of them ends up true. Confirmation bias leads people to only remember the ones that came true, even if the rate of successful predictions is low.
- auganov 6y ago
  Never followed it on a daily basis but come across them once in a while. Most are pretty in line with mainstream right wing commentary just more vague and hyperbolic. Then you've got some crazy claims. But these too seem to be sourced from what's already out there, rather than strictly original. In fact many of these posts just link to stuff on Twitter. As far as I'm concerned it's just somebody very into politics with a peculiar writing style and a penchant for fantasy.
kls 6y ago
"Within days, Citi had put him on administrative leave and his name was removed from the company’s internal directory. He was later terminated. “Mr. Gelinas is no longer employed by Citi,” the company says in a statement. “Our code of conduct includes specific policies that employees are required to adhere to, and when breaches are identified, the firm takes action.” To me this is the most shocking part of the article. If there was no issue with his performance at work, his personal politics and beliefs should not be weighed in the continuation of his current and continued employment. To me this becoming the norm is chilling and echo's in my mind as 1984 becoming a work of non-fiction.
- iron0013 6y ago
  Violent treasonous political cults do not currently constitute a protected class, oddly enough.
  - ThrowawayR2 6y ago
    You missed the point entirely. A bad guy was nailed this time, great. But he wasn't kicked out because he was a bad guy, he was kicked out because he was a liability to the corporation. The mechanisms for outing and booting out this guy works just as well against people you support, like union organizers or whistleblowers or even simply those whose politics doesn't line up with the interests of the business. The sword doesn't care who wields it or who it cuts.
    - iron0013 6y ago
      Union organizers and whistleblowers should and in many cases already do have protections specifically encoded into law. Far-out political cults that routinely slander and threaten violence against their opponents do not serve a particular purpose in the workplace and thus have no similar protections. This guy’s employer correctly pegged him as an embarrassment that had the potential to harm their bottom line and showed him the door. That’s how the labor market under capitalism works.
    - gamblor956 6y ago
im3w1l 6y ago
QAnon scares me. But the persecution is scary too. That Gelinas was hunted down and made to lose his job. That Facebook is dismantling a movement with millions of followers, a small country, with the push of a button. At that scale, being given a deadline to move off platform seems fairer.
- COVardsStayHome 6y ago
  Evil movements should be dismantled. I'd love for Facebook to put a searchable database to consult who was a member of such group making it easier to turn their lives into hell.
- vb6sp6 6y ago
  Facebook should've acted sooner and Gelinas should've know better. Maybe this qanon non-sense will finally go away.
- anonuser123456 6y ago
  People that lie and defame anonymously should be hunted down. You have no right to such a behavior in civil society.
  - im3w1l 6y ago
    I think it's way more complicated than that. First you have to make a distinction between public and private persons. And then there is also the distinction between maliciously defaming someone, and passing on things you heard in good faith. If you heard that your neighbor Bob is a creepy pedo, then warning other people is frankly natural. If you dislike Bob and make up a rumor about him that should be illegal. For powerful public persons the balance is different. The benefits of being able to freely discuss them starts outweighing the harm they suffer from false allegations. That's my current thinking anyway.
    - gamblor956 6y ago
      And then there is also the distinction between maliciously defaming someone, and passing on things you heard in good faith. No, there isn't, morally or legally. If you make defamatory statements, it doesn't matter whether you made them up or simply heard someone else say them and are just passing them along. It's still defamatory, and that's how US law treats such statements (and how it has always treated defamatory statements). Truth is the defense to a defamation lawsuit, not "a little bird told me." TLDR: unless you actually know that Bob is a pedo because you witnessed his crimes or he has been convicted, don't defame Bob.
COVardsStayHome 6y ago
Good, I'll also blind him.
joshstrange 6y ago
> Gelinas raised thousands of dollars on Patreon each month, posting updates using his pseudonym, QAppAnon. > A few months into the Trump administration, Gelinas changed his party affiliation to Republican, and this spring he contributed $200 to Trump’s reelection efforts—his first-ever political contribution, according to federal disclosures. Why am I not surprised at all, raking in thousands of dollars all in self-service and then gives a tiny amount to the candidate he claims to adore... On a separate note I had no idea that this FEC website [0] existed or that this info was so easily accessible. Like it doesn't completely shock me, I figured you could find out who I've donated to if you wanted to look but I never thought it would be this easy and they also have datasets you can download... If I didn't already have too many side-projects that I'm working on then I'd love to heatmap out this data by zip code for donations to party/candidate or play with the data in some other way. It's quite fun to throw in your company name and see who gave how much and to where. [0] https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/individual-contributions/ https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/individual-contributions/
TheJoeMan 6y ago
I really despise articles that claim that since someone posted on a website that has other questionable content, they must therefore be complicit. 4chan/8chan/8kun by nature are for "fringe" content, whether that be harmless conspiracy theories or actual bad actors. We will never break free of the social media conglomerates with the current pattern that fringe content migrates to new websites first, but then these sites are slandered before regular people migrate there.
- iron0013 6y ago
  Because I read the article, I know that the guy who got fired did not merely post on 4chan, but actually created his own Q-related website devoted to pushing the violent, treasonous, slanderous conspiracy theory into the mainstream. I enjoyed reading and understanding this article, and highly recommend that anyone who wishes to express an opinion about it do the same.
  - NotSammyHagar 6y ago
    Yes, thanks for saying thst. His actions according to the article were a lot different than he just had a quirky website.
  - auganov 6y ago
    The article mentions stuff totally unrelated to Q that also happens on these chan websites. As far as I can tell this is what the parent comment was talking about. The fact that Q only took off thanks to 3rd party aggregators only strengthens this point.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

36 points by mrtedbear 6y ago

vnchr 6y ago

Who here has actually read these “QAnon” posts? Any thoughts?

mindcrime 6y ago
I've never read any, mainly because everything I've read about them leads me to rate their likely veracity as somewhere considerably below the writings of Erich von Däniken, Graham Hancock, and Jim Marrs.
- vnchr 6y ago
  Yeah. I don’t understand the massive cross-platform banning of what amounts to some random political commentary/conspiracy. I found the most recent post[1], seems benign enough: January 15, 2020: 1. USA CHINA Phase I deal executed [China bad day] 2. Impeachment articles released by Pelosi _walked [delivered] to Senate [attack v POTUS?][coordinated/planned for a specific day?] 3. 1st C19 case lands @ Seattle-Tacoma Airport [attack v POTUS?] Mathematical probability [same day][natural vs controlled?] WHO BENEFITS THE MOST? Evil surrounds us. Q [1] https://8kun.top/qresearch/res/10957492.html#10957834 https://8kun.top/qresearch/res/10957492.html#10957834
  - ashtonbaker 6y ago
    > random political commentary/conspiracy > seems benign enough Shouldn't these be evaluated in the context of the actual real world consequences of this conspiracy theory?
  - eli_gottlieb 6y ago
    I think that's only benign if you've got your nonsense detectors calibrated properly. If you're a paranoiac, that's candy.
  - catsdanxe 6y ago
    You can ask yourself why was Unity2020 banned as well.
  - NotSammyHagar 6y ago
    It's because time after time people have committed violent acts like showing up at the pizza place in dc with guns, but many more claims to be violent in the future.
catsdanxe 6y ago
The general consensus is that it's a psyop run by some intelligence agency.
- voldacar 6y ago
  It's far too wild, bizarre and creative to be from an intelligence agency. I've followed it off and on for a few years and there's just no way that any pentagon boardroom dweller could have thought up half of this shit. Also, whoever qanon is, they don't understand cryptography and were unable to figure out PGP, based on some old posts on 8chan before that site went down. I assume it's just the work of some masterful troll
  - perrylaj 6y ago
    You may be correct, but you also have to remember that a HUGE amount of the US's intelligence has been outsourced and contracted. Maybe that has pulled back some since Snowden (I have no idea), but there are still hundreds of thousands of contractors working on behalf of US military, intelligence, etc.
Fjolsvith 6y ago
They're more accessible than content at bloombergquint.com.
klondike_ 6y ago
It's a good example of the Nostradamus effect. Just make more and more vague predictions until one of them ends up true. Confirmation bias leads people to only remember the ones that came true, even if the rate of successful predictions is low.
auganov 6y ago
Never followed it on a daily basis but come across them once in a while. Most are pretty in line with mainstream right wing commentary just more vague and hyperbolic. Then you've got some crazy claims. But these too seem to be sourced from what's already out there, rather than strictly original. In fact many of these posts just link to stuff on Twitter. As far as I'm concerned it's just somebody very into politics with a peculiar writing style and a penchant for fantasy.

kls 6y ago

"Within days, Citi had put him on administrative leave and his name was removed from the company’s internal directory. He was later terminated. “Mr. Gelinas is no longer employed by Citi,” the company says in a statement. “Our code of conduct includes specific policies that employees are required to adhere to, and when breaches are identified, the firm takes action.” To me this is the most shocking part of the article. If there was no issue with his performance at work, his personal politics and beliefs should not be weighed in the continuation of his current and continued employment. To me this becoming the norm is chilling and echo's in my mind as 1984 becoming a work of non-fiction.

iron0013 6y ago
Violent treasonous political cults do not currently constitute a protected class, oddly enough.
- ThrowawayR2 6y ago
  You missed the point entirely. A bad guy was nailed this time, great. But he wasn't kicked out because he was a bad guy, he was kicked out because he was a liability to the corporation. The mechanisms for outing and booting out this guy works just as well against people you support, like union organizers or whistleblowers or even simply those whose politics doesn't line up with the interests of the business. The sword doesn't care who wields it or who it cuts.
  - iron0013 6y ago
    Union organizers and whistleblowers should and in many cases already do have protections specifically encoded into law. Far-out political cults that routinely slander and threaten violence against their opponents do not serve a particular purpose in the workplace and thus have no similar protections. This guy’s employer correctly pegged him as an embarrassment that had the potential to harm their bottom line and showed him the door. That’s how the labor market under capitalism works.
  - gamblor956 6y ago

im3w1l 6y ago

QAnon scares me. But the persecution is scary too. That Gelinas was hunted down and made to lose his job. That Facebook is dismantling a movement with millions of followers, a small country, with the push of a button. At that scale, being given a deadline to move off platform seems fairer.

COVardsStayHome 6y ago
Evil movements should be dismantled. I'd love for Facebook to put a searchable database to consult who was a member of such group making it easier to turn their lives into hell.
vb6sp6 6y ago
Facebook should've acted sooner and Gelinas should've know better. Maybe this qanon non-sense will finally go away.
anonuser123456 6y ago
People that lie and defame anonymously should be hunted down. You have no right to such a behavior in civil society.
- im3w1l 6y ago
  I think it's way more complicated than that. First you have to make a distinction between public and private persons. And then there is also the distinction between maliciously defaming someone, and passing on things you heard in good faith. If you heard that your neighbor Bob is a creepy pedo, then warning other people is frankly natural. If you dislike Bob and make up a rumor about him that should be illegal. For powerful public persons the balance is different. The benefits of being able to freely discuss them starts outweighing the harm they suffer from false allegations. That's my current thinking anyway.
  - gamblor956 6y ago
    And then there is also the distinction between maliciously defaming someone, and passing on things you heard in good faith. No, there isn't, morally or legally. If you make defamatory statements, it doesn't matter whether you made them up or simply heard someone else say them and are just passing them along. It's still defamatory, and that's how US law treats such statements (and how it has always treated defamatory statements). Truth is the defense to a defamation lawsuit, not "a little bird told me." TLDR: unless you actually know that Bob is a pedo because you witnessed his crimes or he has been convicted, don't defame Bob.

COVardsStayHome 6y ago

Good, I'll also blind him.

joshstrange 6y ago

> Gelinas raised thousands of dollars on Patreon each month, posting updates using his pseudonym, QAppAnon. > A few months into the Trump administration, Gelinas changed his party affiliation to Republican, and this spring he contributed $200 to Trump’s reelection efforts—his first-ever political contribution, according to federal disclosures. Why am I not surprised at all, raking in thousands of dollars all in self-service and then gives a tiny amount to the candidate he claims to adore... On a separate note I had no idea that this FEC website [0] existed or that this info was so easily accessible. Like it doesn't completely shock me, I figured you could find out who I've donated to if you wanted to look but I never thought it would be this easy and they also have datasets you can download... If I didn't already have too many side-projects that I'm working on then I'd love to heatmap out this data by zip code for donations to party/candidate or play with the data in some other way. It's quite fun to throw in your company name and see who gave how much and to where. [0] https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/individual-contributions/ https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/individual-contributions/

TheJoeMan 6y ago

I really despise articles that claim that since someone posted on a website that has other questionable content, they must therefore be complicit. 4chan/8chan/8kun by nature are for "fringe" content, whether that be harmless conspiracy theories or actual bad actors. We will never break free of the social media conglomerates with the current pattern that fringe content migrates to new websites first, but then these sites are slandered before regular people migrate there.

iron0013 6y ago
Because I read the article, I know that the guy who got fired did not merely post on 4chan, but actually created his own Q-related website devoted to pushing the violent, treasonous, slanderous conspiracy theory into the mainstream. I enjoyed reading and understanding this article, and highly recommend that anyone who wishes to express an opinion about it do the same.
- NotSammyHagar 6y ago
  Yes, thanks for saying thst. His actions according to the article were a lot different than he just had a quirky website.
- auganov 6y ago
  The article mentions stuff totally unrelated to Q that also happens on these chan websites. As far as I can tell this is what the parent comment was talking about. The fact that Q only took off thanks to 3rd party aggregators only strengthens this point.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]