The Prophecies of Q
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
https://www.amazon.com/When-Prophecy-Fails-Leon-Festinger/dp...
When reality contradicts beliefs, the mind would rather adjust its filters on reality than adjust its beliefs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millerism
QAnon is absolutely a cult derived from the ideals of Christian spiritual warfare, apocalypticism, and associated eschatology.
The last time it was this bad was during the daycare panics of the 80's and 90's a movement I myself was a victim of.
As soon as I heard the stuff about satanic rituals and drinking babies' blood I immediately thought of the McMartin trial. Sorry to hear you were caught up in the SRA mass hysteria, hope it is not still affecting your life.
Both social forms require rigid distinction between the in-group and the out-group.
The in-group separates themselves from the out-group by the ritual of confirming that they believe things that are obviously false.
Similar to how criminal gangs use tattoos to both identify the in-group to each other, and to ensure the out-group won't accept them if they defect.
I guess it's a problem that has been exacerbated by information technology: distance from other believers no longer inhibits your ability to create an echo chamber to the same degree it use to.
Remember, the US Military is the true defender of the Constitution. Q is supposed to be coordinating the restoration of constitutional control of the government to the American people.
There have been dozens if not hundreds of governments where the military wrested control from elected officials as "true defenders of the Constitution." We call those military coups. They generally represent the death of a Constitutional republic.
America was founded partially to escape rule by military might.
“I [state your full name], Do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God (optional).” [1]
1. https://www.airman.af.mil/Portals/17/002%20All%20Products/00...
If I didn't know better, I'd guess the American people elected someone to "drain the swamp" who brought a swamp with him.
Any day now.
I can't wait until The New Yorker is telling me about how a new dangerous cult is worshiping meme magic and praising at the altar of Kek. Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if that's already happened.
It reminds me of when the NYTimes caught wind of the NPC meme* and their initial reporting was along the lines of "ARE THESE RUSSIAN BOTS? IS OUR DEMOCRACY BEING ATTACKED?." No you out of touch ivory tower fools, it's kids in their 20s with too much time on their hands who love the attention you give them.
As a side note, I know someone who fell deep into the gamergate hole as it was happening and then realized how toxic it was and did a complete 180. Now they spend all their time arguing with conspiracy theorists on the internet about how their logic is faulty. There's a certain type of person that is susceptible to this kind of stuff in general, for or against.
*https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/16/us/politics/npc-twitter-b...
Frankly this group is not interesting. It is just another group of conspiracy theorists that are spewing out a even more ill defined and crazy theory than most have before.
What would be more interesting to look into is why they are getting traction with people that previously were seemingly well informed ([n=1] the man in the article that had watched CNN for years before switching). That is more important. Why is it happening more and more that people get sucked into these 'obviously' lunatic groups and beliefs, and what can be done to make sure it doesn't happen.
Deep diving into the nitty gritty of the posting history of this Q person was way too much detail that did little to nothing for the article in my opinion.
But, I have to admit, had I read more of it at the time, I would have been ready to believe it.
Ever since then, I don't like writing this comment, people completely dismiss me after that, but a friend of mine actually did apply for a job about a year before that all came out, at a pizza place, not a chain, some tiny little hole in the wall in a seedy neighbourhood, and was shown a back room with some matresses where she was told she could 'make extra money'.
The thing is, there are dark, terrible seedy things that go on in the world, but, unlike what people like Q and the people that believe him think, it's not some grand unified conspiracy involving every level of government and large companies.
It's places in your neighbourhood, apartments where women are trafficked from foreign countries by gangs and pimps to make them money, or they run hidden brothels out of businesses they own.
Conflating these things to a giant conspiracy though is wrong and takes attention away from the people actually doing terrible things and lets them keep getting away with it while everyone's busy going after this shady non-existent shadow network.
This is akin to believing that all women cheat just because it actually happens to be the case that you met one that actually did, or thinking all Jewish people are trying to get your money because you were once defrauded by one.
The problem with paranoid mindsets is not that they're always incorrect, it's that they're pathological in their structure.
We can assign the possibility of Q being true without actually taking a side and acting on it. I can say "this is both compelling and unlikely to be true, but as I long as I don't have to act on it, it doesn't matter if I believe in it or not". We can let the evidence over time build a stronger case for it or destroy it.
The only reason I can see not to do that is if it introduces unacceptable consequences in the meantime, as the article is suggesting, but it seems like the reporting against it is ridiculously cherry picked and disingenuous. There's probably a much stronger case for stopping BLM as a organization at the moment, but I don't think I've seen an Atlantic article suggesting that.
For the time being, Q seems like a harmless movement. It would be a red flag if Q denounced a group of people without justification, but Q has been pretty specific about the things and people it denounces, and if things go according to Q's plan the people it's denouncing are going to have their chance in court .
Q-anon is dangerous and baseless libel that undermines democratic institutions.
One person has already been murdered: https://www.npr.org/2019/07/22/744244166/shooters-lawyer-he-...
Many others have been threatened with violence.
>It would be a red flag if Q denounced a group of people without justification
Which they have. Only well-known Democratic-party-affiliated personalities are implicated. The blatantly partisan narrative creates great potential for political violence.
And like many other conspiracy theories, the narrative is full of antisemitic tropes: https://www.adl.org/qanon
Finally, there's the obvious logical difference between conspiracy theory and conspiracy fact. The latter has actual evidence supporting it.
And the probability of this menagerie of preposterous claims actually turning out to be true would be close to zero due to the vast number of participants who would have to keep silent. The more people who participate in any given conspiracy, the less time it can be kept secret on average:
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
I'm just viewing it as compelling entertainment. Outside of this thread, I haven't mentioned it to anyone. It's probably premature to unwaveringly denounce or support it. When we have to actually act on it, or if it causes actual crime in the real world, that's when it helps if you take a stand.
Some people are appealing to people who believe it in their political campaigns. I think this is sufficient to make it relevant.
However, human intelligence has consistency and credibility problems which make it easier to attack and undermine. The problems are magnified by anonymity and the resulting lack of accountability.
I am not sure how to solve those problems. The Q faithful should remember the inherent instability of that type of operation and work to solve it, not attack anyone who is in any way critical of it.
Oh, you sweat summer child me.
When people no longer have any idea about what could be true, they have to trust, usually a strong-man leader. This is how Putin maintains such control of his country. It's how he spread discord in eastern Ukraine, with wild stories about "they want to kill and eat your children." You hear Lukashenko say the same sorts of things as he struggles to keep power in Belarus (the villain being NATO forces...)
I beg of everybody on HN in the US: if you have family that starts to fall into these conspiracy theories, hold on to your relationship with them and try with all your night to bring them back to reality. We are at a scary stage with a pandemic and economic disaster, and many people are quite vulnerable to the false sense of order that these conspiracy theories provide. I think that familial connections might be one of the only things stronger than the strange pull of these conspiracy theories.
This creates an appetite for alternative sources of information, even if those sources are of very low quality.
Okay Q is a wacky conspiracy theory. What's the headline real-world event here though? Some kid walked into a pizza joint with a rifle. That's pretty much it. He didn't shoot anyone, didn't explicitly threaten anyone, didn't break anything. But that makes this cult a massive danger?
Meanwhile, hundreds of nationwide riots have been going on for months, burning down thousands of businesses, destroying livelihoods, but don't you dare even question the legitimacy of that.
People are red-pilling. Once they are awake, they cannot be put back asleep. This is what makes this cult dangerous.
And its not just conservative America that's red-pilling:
https://www.mesabitribune.com/news/6-greater-minnesota-mayor...
https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4852367/user-clip-democrat-ca...
When reality contradicts beliefs, the mind would rather adjust its filters on reality than adjust its beliefs. I've spent enough time chatting with flat-Earthers to watch the process in action.
People are leaving the Democrat Party.
The plurality of Americans declare themselves independents, but there are more people affiliated to either major party than neither.
America tried "fire everyone back to the postmen" in their first few years. It was terrible. It's why we instituted laws limiting executive authority to fire.
Notice how immediately they point to one case of violence which was denounced by Q. Seems like an attempt to emotionally connect Q with a single nutjob.
Do you think it would be fair to write articles about everyone based on the actions of a single supporter with clear mental illness? Why the double standard?
If what Q is saying is so dangerous then why not actually show that material and debunk it directly?
Just like the podesta emails the content is always completely ignored because the people writing these articles don't want you to be informed here. Ask yourself why? What is their agenda here? Is it in your best interest?
Read the drops qmap.pub and think for yourself.
If you haven't read any of the drops how can anyone take your opinion seriously on something you know nothing about?
Was there a defining a moment that made you believe in it, if you do?
I'm not going read drops or maps, I'm not even sure what that means and don't plan to spend my weekend figuring that out, there's only so much time and we have to pick and choose ya know, so if you could expand, please do.
Its why the silent majority exists.
..."drops" is literal "post was dropped", the site is just a collection of unredacted posts by Q.
Probably because the "material" is generated faster than anyone could possibly analyze it, which is why there are so many variants of the conspiracy theory floating around and why more seem to appear with each passing day.
"think for yourself"
Sure, let's start with, "Does this seem realistic?" If not, let's try, "Is there extraordinary evidence for these extraordinary claims?" Thus far the answer is "no, not even close" and the entire thing looks like a desperate attempt on the part of Trump's supporters to deny the plainly obvious fact that the man is an inept moron with deep insecurities and no conscience.
(Edit: the first thing I saw on website you provided was an assertion that the DNC logo looks like the satanic baphomet symbol. I do not even see what can be properly debunked there -- it is an opinion and there is no actual conclusion to be drawn even if the logo looked kind of like baphomet. I could claim that Trump's left eye looks like the meta key on an old Lisp machine keyboard, and demand that you debunk my claim.)
I'm not as hopeful for technological solutions to societal ills, though -- it seems to me that most problems are matters of historic and current national/global philosophies (as instantiated by norms of personal action), ie the problem really just has to do with how we are as a species, and technology in and of itself can't breed the empathy and unity of purpose (for the progress of human knowledge and standard of life, the stewardship of our planet, the continual growth of our species' sphere of concern to hopefully come to recognize all of our universe for the real wonder and treasure that it is) as would be necessary for the real flourishing of our world. Of course, technology could be useful for this, provided it did in fact disseminate such ideas. But these ideas run counter to those most easily spread (hate, fear, etc) and so (as it stands) the infrastructure of the internet allows the latter to spread more easily than the former. I guess (after all this ramble) that I hope that technology in the future can be built with these goals of universal progress in mind, and that such ideas can spread to their users. But such a thing must be done intentionally, as otherwise technology often has the opposite effect.
> I am despondent for humanity, that so many of us are so [..] (2) incapable of actually doing their own research (instead castigating people to "do their own research", which if they did in any reasonable way would show the absurdity of belief in Q)
These two statements are contradicting each other. You should be happy about that comment, because it has a link to the full content of Q's posts, allowing people to actually do their own research. And for that matter, is actually advocating for it!
> Read the drops qmap.pub and think for yourself.
"reading the drops" isn't the sum total of the "research" one would do to see Q for what it is, and anyways, their content is not something I'm unaware of. I don't even know why I'm dignifying this with a response, since it so clearly misinterprets my previous comment. What a morass, what a mess. I hope that the future is better for you.
"That same day, she shared a separate post suggesting that Michelle Obama is secretly a man. Someone responded with skepticism: “I am still not convinced. She shows and acts evil, but a man?” Shock’s reply: “Research it.” There was a post claiming that Representative Adam Schiff had raped the body of a dead boy at the Chateau Marmont, in Los Angeles"
What research should I do here? So many "claims" from QAnon look exactly like this, and it looks like random garbage. There is nothing to "research" here because it is impossible to research all this BS. But apparently I am a "sheep" unless I prove Michelle Obama is a woman? Or any other insane claim they make up regularly every day?
Sorry, no, QAnon is garbage. No need to "research it" to know that.
I am thinking for myself, and when I see QAnon, I don't see a group that is doing any thinking at all. The "drops" you talk about are meaningless garbage.