I read this report that the QAnon people and the antivaxxers are finding common cause, as a result of QAnon advocates targeting the anti-vaxxer social media pages to gain a wider audience.
QAnon rhetoric has been seeping into anti-vax pages all over social media in recent months. Devoted adherents of the conspiracy theory have weathered tech giants’ sweeping crackdowns by infiltrating other communities that exist on the platforms, then poisoning them with disinformation. This has transformed the large ecosystem of anti-vax communities online into radicalization pipelines for QAnon.
“The purpose of vaccination is to literally slaughter the population and dumb everyone down and render them helpless,” Larry Cook, the creator of “Stop Mandatory Vaccination,” warned in his final Facebook Live video. “It is a global plan to literally enslave every human on the planet.”
Over Cook’s right shoulder was an image of the American flag atop the QAnon slogan, #WWG1WGA. Over his left was the letter Q, decorated in stars and stripes. Comments poured in from viewers thanking him for “awakening” them to the “truth.”
So now we have two groups that are immune to science and reason seeming to come together. What happens if other groups that also have crackpot beliefs, such as those who think that it was massive fraud in the election that caused Trump’s loss, climate change deniers, and those who are awaiting the second coming of Jesus and hoping for a war in the Middle East to fulfill that prophecy, also join forces with them?
Will that result in some kind of critical loony mass that tears apart the fabric of reality and creates a loony singularity that sucks in everything and everyone?
Yes.
Over on “Respectful Insolence” this is referred to as crank magnetism.
https://respectfulinsolence.com/2016/09/05/the-marriage-of-creationism-and-antivaccinationism-literally/
And now we can add Q anon to the mix.
BTW Kent Hovind is charging the government with subjecting him to involuntary servitude because he was sent to prison for tax fraud.
The cross-fertilisation of different conspiracy groups is already covered by the apparent phenomenon (or at least term) of crank magnetism. As for the effect this will have on the fabric on the universe, I’ll defer to the expert opinion of CERN researchers. They should have both the necessary science background and experience with crackpot and conspiracy theories.
I’d be slightly more concerned with the other version of a singularity. As the conspiracy theories become ever more diverse I wonder if we’ll not all eventually end up believing in one or another. The internet seems made to perpetuate these things, generating and amplifying noise to bury any signal that might be used to fact-check the latest fad. (After all there’s money to be made that way) For minor errors and misconceptions that’s probably already true, it’s just nothing that motivates any of us to pick up signs and protest over.
From the title, I was thinking of an AI singularity type of scenario, only less reasonable somehow. But you get the idea: fill all of the intertubes, release the kraken, and then … something inscrutable happens. It rubs the lotion on its skin, or else it gets the hose again.
Are we talking about the future though? It sounds like an old phenomenon:
Obviously, I should have refreshed before commenting. Too many tabs.
I was listening to the podcast about Qanon and it sounds like thier opsec is totally shit. They’re using the same servers as 8kun to transmit their postings, how amateur. Not that the fans will care, but it’s pretty low-skill grift.
I gotta admit it makes me daydream about how to do some grifts. Apparently it’s legal now, to separate suckers from their money. Eventually the pendulum will swing but shot I had no idea what a bunch of simpletons we are surrounded by.
Kent Hovind is charging the government with subjecting him to involuntary servitude because he was sent to prison for tax fraud.
Did they use him as forced prison labor? If so I’m afraid we should all be supporting him.
I’m not sure. Many of the particles in the loonyverse are antithetical to each other, causing them to fly violently apart if they happen to collide. It’s possible that the loony-cules could adhere for a while, creating a larger loony-mass, but I think ultimately the structure is too unstable.
A veritable black hole of stupidity. Its been forming for the last fifty years or so, but experienced eponential growth in the last four years.
exponential growth.
Inevitable XKCD link: https://xkcd.com/966/
All those groups, except the anti-vaxxers, are already part of the right-wing denialist loonysphere. Historically, anti-vaxxers have included both far-right and “new age”/”wellness” elements. It’s the latter being sucked rightwards that is the new phenomenon, although Nazism itself contained important mystical/occult/pseudoscience aspects.
Will that result in some kind of critical loony mass that tears apart the fabric of reality and creates a loony singularity that sucks in everything and everyone?
How could we tell?