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Comment by Fargoan | Hacker News Reader

The thing I don't get still is how QAnon became so big. Most everyone who was around on the chans and reddit called it out as bullshit at the time. It wasn't even the first account with a similar story. There was FBIAnon first. It's like Minions. Why do middle aged white women like Minions?

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Is it really as big as it is often portrayed?

AFAIK the conspiracy theory memes have a far and wide reaching, even internationally, even if the people receiving, translating and forwarding them have no idea where they originated. With that said most young people I know is familiar with what QAnon means, and I'm not even in the US.

Much of the QAnon mythology incorporated conspiracy theories and beliefs that already existed within the right-wing and Evangelical communities. I think it tapped into the populist zeitgeist of Trump's base - which was already deeply conspiratorial - and crystallized all of those inchoate fears into a single narrative, promising vindication, redemption and cleansing. I don't think it can be separated from the greater global right-wing populist shift, or the phenomenon of "post-truth" reality, whereby people tend to live in self-reinforcing bubbles of subjective reality manufactured by news and social media, rejecting the mainstream almost by reflex.

I doubt most people who fall into QAnon know what 4chan is or even care. It was a parody that was so on point, the people it was mocking just saw it as a revelation.

It reminds me of the stories about LARPers and edgelords who do something ironically until the meme consumes the host.

Like the rule says, even if you fuck goats ironically, you're still a goatfucker.

It’s just one enormous joke isn’t it? People go on about it because it winds people like the media up.

It's a joke to 4chan et al but not the people who fell down that rabbit hole. I don't know how many people actually believe in it, but based on watching protests and other political activity over the last few years, it's substantial.

> based on watching protests and other political activity over the last few years, it's substantial

I’m not convinced it isn’t just performance art or clever meta-commentary or a joke for the in-person protestors as well.

I've been to a lot of protests of all types [to be clear, as an observer, not a participant], including far right and antivax protests where many QAnon types were present, and I can say without any doubt that most of the people involved are sincere.

I also spent an inordinate amount of time watching protest/political live streams in 2020 and 2021, which further reinforces this.

> I’m not convinced it isn’t just performance art or clever meta-commentary or a joke for the in-person protestors as well.

"Performance art or clever meta-commentary or a joke" has a way of mutating into sincere belief if the content gets at all popular.

There was/is a market for that answers. "Science"/ "journalism" is complex, hard and boring. Creating propaganda that rest on the collective culture gut feelings/fears almost feel the next level after edgy memes

It was really strange to watch my family fall into QAnon. I've been on the internet since the mid 90s. I remember when 4chan came along, I remember it being just a silly place. I remember when Anonymous started there too. But when my family got hooked it was weird they had been watching Glenn Beck and Alex Jones and other rightwing figures. Then I remember my step-mom telling me she wanted to join Anonymous and become the biggest informant ever. I was taken aback. I didn't understand where the conjunction between right-wing media consumption and a quasi-hacker group intersected. This was back in 2014 mind you. I took her down to my computer and I showed her 4chan and a few other places and asked her is this what she was talking about when talking about Anonymous. She had no idea what I was talking about. She lost her mind, quite literally, a little bit later. My dad filed for divorce and they separated. But he continued on with the Q shit. I don't talk to him anymore, he's a fucking stranger to me these days.

I think it has something to do with the adoption of the meme beyond channer culture. To anyone using the site, it's obvious that some random tripcode user holds no more credibility than an anonymous one.

But perhaps baseless, pseudo-anonymous allegations are given an extra flair of "mysteriousness" and "intrigue" to those who are unfamiliar with the site. The media plays into this: recall the "hackers on steroids" incident.

Susceptibility is a big factor too. Seeing something mysterious on the internet is one thing, but believing in something that has no factual or verifiable basis is quite another.

So a followup question is, why are so many people susceptible? It seems to have something to with making sense of the world when you feel like you're being lied to all the time, and I totally get that part, but I don't get how these conspiracy theories help with that.

It would be one thing if it was just a handful of people, because there's always a few people who will believe anything, but it's a lot more than just a few in this case.

> The thing I don't get still is how QAnon became so big. Most everyone who was around on the chans and reddit called it out as bullshit at the time.

We live in an era where people feel free to believe whatever they want to believe, and apparently QAnon provided a framework for some of those desired beliefs.

American society is headed towards a crack-up, and no solution is forthcoming from any current political faction, because that would require giving ground for the greater good.

How big is it and how do you know?

The media created the circus.

It has been like that since the days of exploding vans. The existence of “investigative articles” written by “respected journalists” like those is still the ultimate planet-scale trolling.

QAnon succeeded because they don't discriminate.

No matter what stupid theory you believe in, you can still be in QAnon and not be judged.

Bill Gates pushing 5G chips in the COVID vaccine? Come in. Trump is still president and will take over again Really Soon? Yep, we got you. George Soros something something conspiracy? You're welcome.

when it just started taking off Facebook was suggesting multiple qanon groups for me to join, each with tens of thousands of members. I think it was successful because it shed the context it was borne out of, no one on facebook knew about FBIAnon

> The thing I don't get still is how QAnon became so big.

Same as any other conspiracy theory really:

> Q, the anonymous internet poster behind the movement, who claims to be a high-ranking U.S. intelligence official, releases cryptic breadcrumbs known as “drops” online that followers then decipher. Drops are said to explain or predict developments in the supposed war between President Trump and the alleged deep-state pedophiles. Participating in what feels like an exclusive intelligence circle can satisfy the human need for uniqueness, psychologists’ research has shown, prompting a desire to continue participating (Lantian, A., et al., Social Psychology, Vol. 48, No. 3, 2017).

> People also turn to conspiracy theories when important psychological needs aren’t being met, says Douglas. Her research shows that such narratives can fulfill our need for certainty and security, for instance, when events seem random, and for social belonging (Current Directions in Psychological Science, Vol. 26, No. 6, 2017).

> Those findings help explain why many Americans, including QAnon supporters, have turned to extreme explanations for the COVID-19 pandemic. Survey data collected by psychologist Daniel Romer, PhD, research director at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center, suggest that nearly a third of U.S. adults think the coronavirus is a bioweapon created by the Chinese government (Romer, D. & Jamieson, K.H., Social Science & Medicine, Vol. 263, 2020).

> “Conspiracy theories make people feel as though they have some sort of control over the world,” Romer says. “They can be psychologically reassuring, especially in uncertain times.”

* https://www.apa.org/news/apa/2020/conspiracy-theories

> The reasons why people endorse or believe in conspiracy theories are diverse. Reported individual effects are mostly small and treated in isolation. Conspiracies appear to appeal to those who feel disconnected from society, who are unhappy or dissatisfied with their circumstances, who possess a subjective worldview that includes unusual beliefs, experiences and thoughts, and do not feel in control of their life (c.f. Rose, 2017). The endorsement of them challenges existing power structures in society (Imhoff and Bruder, 2014). Furthermore, those with higher levels of clinically relevant traits such as paranoid thought and schizotypy endorse them. Conceptually, for a comprehensive understanding of the causes of conspiracy beliefs, interaction of predictors should be investigated. Anomia, for example, combines elements of social-dominance orientation, powerlessness, need for cognitive closure, and distrust (Lamberty et al., 2018), yet variables are often treated independently.

* https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.0020...

There was probably bound to be a "big" one at some point that hooked a lot of people eventually, and it may be just a coïncidence that it was QAnon: nothing particular about it, just 'good timing'.

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