Here’s something else I don’t understand: QAnon. I watched the HBO documentary, “Q: Into the Storm” which covers the phenomenon from its beginning to just after the election, and it suffered from being too close to the problem. It centered almost entirely on Jim Watkins and his son Ron, who were running the various chan boards that hosted Q, with some time spent on prominent QTubers — the documentarian clearly proposes that Ron Watkins is Q and makes a good case for it. What I mainly learned from the documentary is that all of the people behind Qs raging popularity are huge, obnoxious, pompous assholes. It made it hard to watch, when the primary protagonists are these preening twits who have learned the deep secret behind all religions: be cryptic and vague so your followers can read their own beliefs into your pronouncements, promise secret knowledge (even if you don’t have any) so your followers will pay close attention, and be sure to recruit apostles who will do most of your work for you.
It’s an unpleasant spectacle of singularly unpleasant people doing next to nothing but successfully duping hordes of ordinary people to join the cult. But, as I said, it suffers too much from its tight focus on the Watkins duo, who mainly smirk and act evasive. And then it ends, just as the media, like Facebook and YouTube, were finally shutting off the conduits that allowed them to proselytize easily, and it just sort of end. The documentarian has fingered the guilty party — Ron Watkins is Q! — and then it ends. What next? How are the victims of Q propaganda coping? What’s to prevent this from happening again?
At least CripDyke tells us what’s next: more of the same, only worse. As Q gets blocked and banned everywhere his acolytes turn, GhostEzra rises to add more fire and brimstone to followers of Q.
For in the shadow of the valley of Vice it has been revealed that a messiah has come, a prophet named GhostEzra, who comes to rule the denizens of the QAnon world exactly as we would expect. Vice reports that GhostEzra, who now runs one of the biggest if not the biggest QAnon accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers, began as upbeat, portraying Trump as the victim of election fraud but also portraying the election fraud as inevitably unsuccessful, something that the QAnons were clearly destined to overturn. But before much time passed, GhostEzra went from being relentlessly upbeat to excoriating followers if they, themselves, were not sufficiently upbeat.*1 It’s one thing to tell others, “Have hope!” and it’s another to tell them, “I will beat you until your morale improves.” GhostEzra, apparently, went all in on the latter.
GhostEzra adds even more of that crucial spice, hate, to the recipe. Hey, if a little anti-Semitism was enough to jazz up Q followers, just think what pouring an overwhelming amount of Jew-hatred will do!
If the US government wanted to, they should be able to out (identify) Qanon in a heartbeat. The various US Intelligence budgets are huge, probably over $100 billion per year.
They do employ a large number of computer agents as well.
The budget for DHS/FBI is $70 billion a year.
It is probably Jim Watkins.
Probably the US government knew that an hour after they appeared.
Watkins probably disappeared because he realized that if he kept going, he was either going to be outed, arrested, sued, or all three.
If these parasites actually could extract nutrition or energy from the brains they have infected, it would make some evolutionary sense.
But they just seem motivated by malice.
(OT. Good news. The astronomer Butler has finally been kicked out of wossname big American science organisation for sexual harassment.)
“the primary protagonists are these preening twits who have learned the deep secret behind all religions: be cryptic and vague so your followers can read their own beliefs into your pronouncements”
…paging Nostradumbass on the White courtesy phone…
Who was it who said that they had no idea there were so many stupid people in the world until they got on the Internet?
AOT,K.
Watching “Q: Into the Storm” merely confirmed my long held opinion that political and tribal affiliations are far more ingrained and resilient than religious faith. The demise of Christianity in the United States won’t bring about a progressive revolution. Religious conservatives will easily find other reasons to justify their paranoia and bigotry, as the rise of Alex Jones, Trump, and Q-Anon has clearly shown. Defeating the likes of Alex Jones, Trump, and Q-Anon is only the start. Many more will follow.
Progress will happen, but it’s going to be slow and with every victory (gay marriage) a new challenge quickly appears (trans rights). Regressive conservatism is deeply ingrained in American society and it’s going to be a long struggle to hold the line against it.
Prophets and cults are a dime a dozen. It’s just that BI (Before Internet) one didn’t notice them as mutch.
Probably put this in before, but it reminds me of that SciFi story where they had the usual Earth vs. Outer Planets thing, only the Earth had been infected by a virulent meme so contagious the outer planets forced all communication from Earth through a filter. Definitely reminds me of QAnon.
tacitus@6
I have never understand why anyone would think it would. There are so many other elements that reinforce privilege, either real or perceived (the old “I’m OK with being dirt poor and white as long as Black people are even poorer than I am.”) There’s the intentional or automatic use of resentment to quash any society-wide attempt to improve living conditions, since it will inevitably leave some people somewhat worse off if they benefited from the current inequitable system.
Religion is one of the tools for keeping people down, but it’s only one of them, and many people who are against religion as such are not driven by a desire for equitable distribution. In my experience, many are simply elitists with one more reason to feel superior to the ignorant masses.
birgerjohansson @ # 2: The astronomer Butler has finally been kicked out of wossname big American science organisation for sexual harassment.
As a collector of Butler scandals, I had to look into that further, but so far my search has only uncovered an astronomer named Geoffrey Marcy fired for sexual harassment and some foofaraw about a professor Judith Butler defending a literature professor accused of same.
Which of our clan of black sheep upheld the family tradition this time?
Pierce R. Butler@10 I knew some people long ago from Butler, Pennsylvania. I even went to a wedding there once, if memory serves. Any connection to the founder?
Pierce R. Butler @ 10
My bad, I meant Geoff Marcy, the names of the two early exoplanet researchers have become ‘quantum entangled’ (which is the excuse I will use in court, betting on jurors to be clueless on what it means).
Anyway, I hope a new generation of astronomers will make toxic conduct a thing of the past.
Speaking of disinformation and astronomy, the apparent resurrection of the ‘flying saucer’ meme gives me migraine.
Remember what happened to stormfront? It went belly up because light most rightwing movements its users wanted free content and platforms. They were unwilling to contribute, and advertisers wouldn’t touch them. And frank was an abysmal failure because its creators were incompetent.
If extremists are forced off commercial social media and have to built their own sites, they won’t last long. Corporate social media sites are all run by far right mindsets (e.g. google, fascistbook, twitter, etc.) and there are plenty of James Damores out there. But they still put money before political ideology, and without profit they’re not going to start or run a hate site. Keeping the pressure on advertisers is the best way to silence those clowns.
I have Ronnie James Dio’s voice looping in my head: “if you listen to fools … the mob rules!”
If extremists are forced off commercial social media and have to built their own sites, they won’t last long.
I know a few hackers who’ve popped neofascist sites and archived their user databases. Basically, the sites can be blown up at any time. Just doxxing the cops who used to use their work internet to access ${hate site} is months of potential entertainment.
Only idiots would join those sites, but, yeah…
PaulBC @ # 11: … Butler, Pennsylvania. … Any connection to the founder?
Probably – my branch of the Butler clan descends from ejecta of the Irish Butlers who settled in Pennsylvania (though our most notorious scandaleers hailed from South Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana and Minnesota).
birgerjohansson @ # 12 – Thanks for the clarification – but please don’t tease me in that way again! (OTOH, I hadn’t heard of Paul Butler before, so I appreciate having another name for the small non-rogues’-gallery of Butleriana.)
Pierce R. Butler@16 Hmm… actually not named for a founder, but for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Butler_(general) born in Dublin, Ireland.
PaulBC @ # 17 – Thanks for the link. Oddly, it shows no connection with various other Irish Pierce Butlers.
@ 18 Pierce R. Butler
Something dicey about that site. It says “He [Butler] negotiated the Treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1784”. However the wiki says the Treaty of Fort Stanwix was negotiated by Sir William Johnson, etc., etc., in 1768.
Crip Dyke:
Hee.
tacitus @ #6:
I agree with the more general point but feel compelled to note that QAnon isn’t an alternative to or substitute for religion – as several rightwingers, who love to blame everything they dislike on the decline of religion, claim – but heavily overlapping with white evangelicalism. Evangelicals are more likely than others to support and believe in it, and many of its tropes are drawn from Christianity.
jrkrideau @ # 19: Something dicey about that site.
Everything at Wikipffft is aleatory.
Apparently (does a web search involving multiple sources produce more or less randomosity?) there were two Treaties of Fort Stanwix.