It’s a dark hole, riddled with sticky webs, when one tries to investigate QAnon.
Yesterday I tried to do it, in order to post a short explanation for those who have neither time nor the strong inclination to try to understand what this dark force is, and where it came from.
I was only able to answer “where it came from,” probably, with the help of many investigative writers and podcasters.
To fully understand the concept, one must know about image or message boards, how they operate, what kind of “world” that is in the first place. It’s real Joseph Conrad “Heart of Darkness” stuff, and I’m not going there.
I will focus on only two boards, but there are others involved. Please understand that most Q followers do not access their information directly from the source. Most, the vast majority, have other sources that they follow, who “interpret” the drops that Q makes. The most direct way apart from the message boards 8kun (formerly 8chan), is by subreddit messages. (I’m not linking them because I don’t encourage anyone to read them).
Other ways have included Twitter and YouTube “influencers,” bloggers, and even online Christian ministers, most of which are passed among recent Q followers in the same way the Bible verse of the day is shared. Most of these “influencers” attempt to interpret the drops, nearly always in a way that leads to the beliefs that the pandemic is fake or that the former president is still the President of the United States (or will be re-instated on March 4th or wherever they move the goalpost next).
So, here’s my understanding.
Analysts say Q is or was two different people.
The conduit for the current Q posts is a known pornographer named Jim Watkins who owns a “pig farm” in the Philippines.
No one knows if the original Q is even posting anymore because the former conduit was a South African named Paul Furber, who began posting the material on 4chan. Furber’s access to post “Q drops” on 8chan was yanked by Watkins. (There’s a long involved story about how Watkins gained control of 8chan in the first place).
8chan was an “anything goes” message board. It contained porn, misogynist content, pedophilia, white nationalist, anti-government/political manifestos. The ability of anyone to post anything without concern about censorship, or even basic decency, encouraged at least three mass shooters to post their gripes about society before committing their terrorist acts.* As a result of the three mass shootings, Cloudflare removed its protection against cyber attacks from the 8chan platform. 8chan moved to another provider, briefly. By August of 2019, 8chan was offline. By November of the same year, it had been cloned as 8kun.
We all know that the pandemic atmosphere has caused bored and frightened people to find answers. It’s easy to make everything into a conspiracy, especially when such ideas are embraced by a political leader in the face of an election.
It’s an unhealthy way to cope with uncertainty. Analysts say that Watkins is using a technique called “grooming” to normalize conspiracy theory ideas and to drive traffic to his site (now 8kun). It’s the same technique used on children by pedophiles.
Most people who are looking at Q stuff do not know this background and are looking at derivative sites like Reddit or one of the many YouTube channelers, where “explainers” monetize their interpretations of the latest Q drops.
But wait. Watkins’ son says that the original Q is no longer, as he posted after the January 6th insurrection. It seems to me that the original Q might have been gone long before, when Paul Furber was excluded from the ability to post.
If the original Q is no longer, then traffic to his father’s site nearly disappears and his revenue stream comes to an end.
I personally think that the original Q was an agent of a foreign government. I think the current Q is an imposter, but the effect is the same…sow discord.
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Please don’t send me links to QAnon stuff. I personally don’t look at any of that stuff, even when friends and family send links to me, because it all gives me the creeps. I’m just interested in what is driving it.
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Discussion question: Is the “pig farm” really a pig farm? I have a disconcerting feeling that it might be a euphemism.
Find out more:
Podcasters who have been looking into QAnon:
Q Clearance: Unmasking QAnon (8 podcasts)
QAnon Anonymous (98+ episodes, including paid and free content)
Frontline PBS (2+episodes, Jan. 9 and Jan 19)
The New Yorker Radio Hour (one episode, Jan 15)
Podcasts about disinformation including QAnon and pandemic:
Conspirituality (40+ episodes)
Raw data (an older podcast that does a good analysis)
1A (psychology behind conspiracy)
*From Vox: On August 4, a 21-year-old man opened fire at an El Paso, Texas, Walmart, killing 22 people and injuring at least two dozen others. The incident appears to have an eerie similarity with shootings at a San Diego synagogue in April and two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in March: The shooters were spending time in the same dark corner of the internet, specifically, a site called 8chan — a notoriously difficult-to-police forum. But the El Paso shooting may finally change that.
