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Qanon had several phases. The original Q was probably a 4chan LARP. The "insider LARP" is a fairly established genre on 4chan, Reddit, and other places. Then it

by api 2y ago

Qanon had several phases. The original Q was probably a 4chan LARP. The "insider LARP" is a fairly established genre on 4chan, Reddit, and other places. Then it seems that actual propagandists of some kind took it over and turned it into a weaponized conspiracy ARG for Trump and the alt-right. Then it was kicked off 4chan and from there probably ended up in the hands of the 8chan people or someone connected to them. At least that's a shortened summary of the most credible chain I've seen. Q never used any real security like a PGP key, so there's really no way to know how many Qs there were or how many times the ARG was ARG-jacked.

cempaka 2y ago
The earliest form of a QAnon style narrative being advanced in the public was from Steve Pieczenik, who has a deep intelligence background (involved with the Aldo Moro kidnapping), who was talking about a white hat coup on Alex Jones's show (another source that glows in and of itself) in 2015, a full year before the first Pizzagate drops. I highly doubt it was started as a "LARP" by people who didn't already have deep knowledge of ARGs and psyops.
- api 2y ago
  Maybe. I'm aware of at least a few different ideas about where it came from, but unless somebody confesses it's impossible to tell. It's a giant mess of people pointing at each other and different trails that lead nowhere definitive. I do think the move to 8chan probably coincided with at least one ARG-jacking. The 4chan "trip code" thing Q was using on 4chan is a joke security-wise but the move to 8chan had no hand-off at all. There was no way to have any assurance it was the same person. (Again not that 4chan is secure.) A real "high-level informant" with "Q clearance" would have used a f'ing PGP signature or a signed message in a Bitcoin transaction or something cryptographically verifiable. Edit: the white-hat coup narrative goes back really far in conspiranoid and new-age literature. It goes back at least to the I AM movement, which had a narrative that sounded a lot like Q plus some ascended master woo woo. I AM was a totalitarian cult with fascist-adjacent leanings that was at one point trying to organize a march on Washington, but it never happened for some reason. I think the cult leader died or something if I remember correctly. There's a tiny bit of evidence for a direct link. There was a video making the rounds a while back of Michael Flynn at some Q event saying a prayer that turned out to be straight out of one of the I AM offshoots. Seems a bit of a stretch though to imagine some old cult trying to launch their revolution a second time. It's more likely that grifters are just pulling bullshit from places like I AM to develop their own grifts.

by api 2y ago

cempaka 2y ago

The earliest form of a QAnon style narrative being advanced in the public was from Steve Pieczenik, who has a deep intelligence background (involved with the Aldo Moro kidnapping), who was talking about a white hat coup on Alex Jones's show (another source that glows in and of itself) in 2015, a full year before the first Pizzagate drops. I highly doubt it was started as a "LARP" by people who didn't already have deep knowledge of ARGs and psyops.

api 2y ago
Maybe. I'm aware of at least a few different ideas about where it came from, but unless somebody confesses it's impossible to tell. It's a giant mess of people pointing at each other and different trails that lead nowhere definitive. I do think the move to 8chan probably coincided with at least one ARG-jacking. The 4chan "trip code" thing Q was using on 4chan is a joke security-wise but the move to 8chan had no hand-off at all. There was no way to have any assurance it was the same person. (Again not that 4chan is secure.) A real "high-level informant" with "Q clearance" would have used a f'ing PGP signature or a signed message in a Bitcoin transaction or something cryptographically verifiable. Edit: the white-hat coup narrative goes back really far in conspiranoid and new-age literature. It goes back at least to the I AM movement, which had a narrative that sounded a lot like Q plus some ascended master woo woo. I AM was a totalitarian cult with fascist-adjacent leanings that was at one point trying to organize a march on Washington, but it never happened for some reason. I think the cult leader died or something if I remember correctly. There's a tiny bit of evidence for a direct link. There was a video making the rounds a while back of Michael Flynn at some Q event saying a prayer that turned out to be straight out of one of the I AM offshoots. Seems a bit of a stretch though to imagine some old cult trying to launch their revolution a second time. It's more likely that grifters are just pulling bullshit from places like I AM to develop their own grifts.