> Delusional parasitosis is quite the opposite of "Munchhausen's". It's possible for things to exist in a nexus between opposites, is it not? Morgellons is som

> Delusional parasitosis is quite the opposite of "Munchhausen's". It's possible for things to exist in a nexus between opposites, is it not? Morgellons is something that people only ever "have" if they go looking for it. Self-diagnosis of extreme, rare, "special" diseases that rational people disbelieve, and Munchausens are not that far apart, surely. > And QAnon-followers are in their majority not suffering from psychotic delusions. I didn't say that -- or mean it. [0] What I said was that the emergence of Morgellons -- an internet phenomenon -- is a small model of what later happened with QAnon. Both are non-true, at leas partly fabricated, online phenomena, that simultaneously do not exist and cannot be ignored. The problem comes when you have a bunch of people who are scientifically ignorant, predisposed towards a simple belief that explains things for them, and several bad faith actors (in QAnon's case, Cernovich and the Watkins family, in the Morgellons case, the Morgellons Research Foundation and several blogs). What you end up with is a self-reinforcing bubble of belief around a fallacy that cannot then be ignored, like scar tissue around a tiny fragment of talc. [0] That said, there are for certain delusional aspects of QAnon. It has a Millerite nature and is also spawning even more fringe cults like the JFK reincarnation faction; it absolutely is unpicking people's control over their psychoses, as can be seen from the January 6 defendants.