twistedmentat posted:

If Qanon was created by some dirty tricks .inc for Trump, I hope they got paid up front because he is notorious for not paying people. Which you'd think would come back to bite him in the rear end.

Bucky Fullminster posted:

I still can’t get my head around how the significance of whether or not it’s being purposefully 'controlled' isn’t self-evident. Is it just owlfancier, or is that really the general consensus of the thread?

twistedmentat posted:

If Qanon was created by some dirty tricks .inc for Trump, I hope they got paid up front because he is notorious for not paying people. Which you'd think would come back to bite him in the rear end.

Also
https://www.wonkette.com/someone-made-a-totally-bananapants-satanic-pedo-cabal-network-map
I don't know if this was made by someone pro or someone against Qanon or just someone trying to make sense of it but holy poo poo. Also I love that Nazis are on the pedo side, even though like, their side is the ones flying nazi flags and screaming 1488 constantly.

indiscriminately posted:

...what it is that actually has me worried is the revelation that there's this remote exploit in (human nature? western culture? emotionally stunted unhappy people?) the brains of some large-ish slice of the population, along with the understanding that the social internet provides direct access to these brains by any villain who has funds.

indiscriminately posted:

One's internal theory of mind is learned from one's parents and culture and it's been suggested plausibly that the semi-accurate/useful theory of mind we have now in the west came about relatively recently in human history. That people from the bronze age and before would seem frustratingly eccentric to us even if we could communicate with them losslessly because they believed their own thoughts were their gods speaking to them, more or less. And over the generations since then we've gradually developed better internal, intuitive models for how other people's minds (and also our own minds) work.

Well, what if it were even messier than that, and within the sub-societies of our society there are groups that rarely cross-congregate. They could advance through their lives with very different understandings of how humans operate. They can functionally interact with each other through the transactional systems of the greater society, because otherwise their greater society wouldn't have formed, but they still could have strikingly different theories of mind. And these differences would manifest with diverging interest in stuff like QAnon, which is so intriguing to some and so schlocky and absurd to others.

OwlFancier posted:

I mean I would certainly suggest that left/right politically operates on a fundamentally different conception of how humans work. Or at least libertarian/authoritarian. Authoritarians believe that humans are inherently chaotic and animalistic and that only the strong enforcement of rules from above, be they divine or man made, can keep the bestial nature of humanity in check. Whereas libertarians I think believe more or less the opposite, that humans can and do spontaneously self organize to help each other and that it is actually systems that make us brutal and cruel.

But those two can both be true, which is to say I think people who believe the former probably do work like that.

indiscriminately posted:

One's internal theory of mind is learned from one's parents and culture and it's been suggested plausibly that the semi-accurate/useful theory of mind we have now in the west came about relatively recently in human history. That people from the bronze age and before would seem frustratingly eccentric to us even if we could communicate with them losslessly because they believed their own thoughts were their gods speaking to them, more or less. And over the generations since then we've gradually developed better internal, intuitive models for how other people's minds (and also our own minds) work.

Well, what if it were even messier than that, and within the sub-societies of our society there are groups that rarely cross-congregate. They could advance through their lives with very different understandings of how humans operate. They can functionally interact with each other through the transactional systems of the greater society, because otherwise their greater society wouldn't have formed, but they still could have strikingly different theories of mind. And these differences would manifest with diverging interest in stuff like QAnon, which is so intriguing to some and so schlocky and absurd to others.

Just spit-balling, the Jivaroans got me thinking.

Antifa Turkeesian posted:

Under some models it's more like order vs chaos: authoritarians or conservatives believe that the universe operates by rules that any person can internalize and master, and following those rules will keep them safe or at least better off than if they didn't follow the rules. Because the only thing that can help you is to follow the rules, you're ultimately only responsible for yourself and you can only help others insofar as you encourage them to learn and follow the rules. I see this really handily explaining why they love hurting children so much (you have to beat the rules into them or let the world do it, otherwise they're all soft and can't survive) and why they don't care when bad things happen to other people. It also really explains why they think it's so bad to give money to poor people, as that's basically breaking the rules and creating people who won't follow the rules in order to survive.

Liberals and leftists see the world as fundamentally chaotic and unpredictable, and tend to see rules as consequentialist in nature, made by people in order to help everyone navigate the unpredictability of the universe. There's more emphasis on people working together to survive and ensuring that everyone survives so that they will too--a social order in place of a natural order and an effort to inject some kind of stability into an insane world. The purpose of education and policy is to make people capable and resilient so that they can respond to whatever happens and have family and community for mutual support.

That's a very quick and sloppy rendering. The linguist George Laikoff, who went kind of #resistance around 2016, wrote up a pretty extensive account in a few books of his between the late 90s and 2010 or so.

Carnival of Shrews posted:

In 2020 nothing would totally surprise me. But on balance, I'm going with 'Q started out as ARG-esque shenanigans'.

Wanderer posted:

I've been in that camp for a while, particularly once I noticed that a lot of the truly crazy, early Q stuff can be backtraced reasonably easily to nerd poo poo. For example, the whole adrenochrome thing is way too similar to a particularly creepy file in one of the earlier Resident Evil games, right down to the "we harvest it while they're scared to make the drugs better" bit.

ILL Machina posted:

I honestly love the deepening philosophy and hard questions this thread has surfaced. Is this emergent tribalism just because we're all lonely? How much can we blame the internet? Is there anything satisfying we can do to stop the unmitigated spread of the misinformation? Why are some of us quick to believe conspiracy from what is clearly non-information, not even misinformation, and alienate our families over it? How do (bad) ideas spread? Why are we convinced of anything at all?

It's not just a natural progression towards nihilism, but an attempt to find out what happened to our loved ones, how to get them back, and how to keep from losing others.

It reminds me a lot of how conservative talk radio brainwashes people, like those in my family. That was the old format, the voices familiar and persistent and reliable. They, as listeners, know not to always trust them (they're skeptics at heart) but they start to think Rush is good at asking tough questions and criticising complicated institutions, better than you could because you don't do it for a living. It doesn't matter whether every sentiment or hypothetical is data driven; Rush is just ranting. A sort of speaking in tongues, in the end. Like this thread has said before, as secular as we claim our politics to be, there's a lot more religiosity in our discourse than we like to admit.

Wanderer posted:

I've been in that camp for a while, particularly once I noticed that a lot of the truly crazy, early Q stuff can be backtraced reasonably easily to nerd poo poo. For example, the whole adrenochrome thing is way too similar to a particularly creepy file in one of the earlier Resident Evil games, right down to the "we harvest it while they're scared to make the drugs better" bit.

I figure it started as an SCP Foundation-style alternate reality story, but once people started paying way too much attention to the -chans in the wake of the Christchurch shooting, some combination of credulous boomers, conspiracy theorists, trolls, and Trump cultists latched on and took it mainstream. I'd like to think that in a basement somewhere in the world, there's some dude staring at his screen every day muttering "How the gently caress did I do this?" to himself.

"buzzfeed posted:

Last month, an Italian leftist activist collective called the Wu Ming Foundation pointed to a book they published in the ’90s that is shockingly similar to QAnon.

In 1999, Roberto Bui, Giovanni Cattabriga, Federico Guglielmi, and Luca Di Meo, writing under the name "Luther Blissett," published an Italian novel called Q.

"Luther Blissett" was a name regularly adopted in the ’90s by leftists, anarchists, and general troublemakers in Italy. It was used for staging all kinds of pranks. The Luther Blissetts in different cities would occasionally communicate by phone, but for the most part the project just spread organically. Think of it like an analogue Guy Fawkes Anonymous mask.

Three of the authors behind Luther Blissett — Bui, Cattabriga, and Guglielmi — told BuzzFeed News that the Blissett project was "a network of activists, artists and cultural agitators who all shared the name 'Luther Blissett.'" They now operate under the name "Wu Ming" or "No Name."

The plot of their novel Q is pretty similar in structure to the basics of the QAnon conspiracy theory. It follows the journey of an unnamed Anabaptist religious radical across Europe during the 16th century. He joins various movements that emerge following the Protestant Reformation. The whole time he's being pursued by a spy for the Roman Catholic Church named Q.

The book sparked all kinds of debates about what it's actually about, but its authors said it was meant to be autobiographical. "We often described it as 'playbook,' an 'operations manual' for cultural disruption," they said.

Basically, Q is a handbook for activists who want to disrupt society.

So, let's break this down. What are the similarities between an Italian novel from the ’90s and the QAnon conspiracy theory that's resulting in armed standoffs with police in the US?

"Coincidences are hard to ignore," Bui, Cattabriga, and Guglielmi said. "Dispatches signed 'Q' allegedly coming from some dark meanders of top state power, exactly like in our book."

They also pointed to the fact that the Q from the QAnon community is described almost exactly like Luther Blissett used to be described, "an entity of about 10 people that have high security clearance."

One of the most popular theories in the QAnon community is that John F. Kennedy Jr. faked his own death in 1999 and became QAnon, which is also the year Q was first published.

"We can't say for sure that it's an homage," they said. "But one thing is almost certain: our book has something to do with it. It may have started as some sort of, er, 'fan fiction' inspired by our novel, and then quickly became something else."

Twitter: @Wu_Ming_Foundt

OwlFancier posted:

I think "The fact that the early stuff looks like dumb nerd poo poo is only further proof it is a secret agency covering its tracks" is part of why I think answering conspiracy theories with other conspiracy theories is kind of silly.

Like, you're doing the thing, the conspiracy thing, where evidence that contradicts your explanation is actually a deliberate misdirection that only proves the conspiracy more, and yes your position might be unfalsifiable but you should still believe it rather than any simpler explanation.

Thoughtless posted:

How about authoritarian leftists, or the libertarian right? I'm curious as to how those fit in, now.

I've read a lot of Lakoff, though mainly the linguistics. Which books does he talk about this stuff in?

Bucky Fullminster posted:

If I'd told you that Cambridge Analytica had meddled in the election, and that a secret Russian agency was creating fake facebook profiles to create create fake events, and people actually went to them, and that went on to create tension and sow division within certain communities, would you call that a conspiracy?

poo poo like this happens all the time. We know for a fact the Psy Group literally pitched the Trump Campaign on something like this. We know for a fact that Roger Stone worked with wikileakls to create the idea that Hillary Clinton was a Satan worshipping pedophile. And almost certainly used 4chan to do it. I'm not making this up. It's not clear why you are so adamant that the line definitely stops before here.

Carnival of Shrews posted:

quote:

the three key ingredients seem to be generally tough times, a struggle between two fairly evenly-matched powers until one or both will use any method to get an edge, and the arrival of a new way to monetise the spread of belief in a Conspiracy of Evil (relatively cheap printing back then, social media now).

pop fly to McGillicutty posted:

That was a conspiracy. That was an honest to God actual conspiracy and Q nuts ignore it because it isn't part of their "plan".


Remember, conspiracy doesn't mean "something crazy that isn't true"

It means "two or more people working in secret with an agenda".

OwlFancier posted:

It's just... stories created with characters they recognize off the tv and from pop culture, doing pop culture scandals and mixed in with pop christian mythology and poo poo. It's fanfiction.

indiscriminately posted:

An evil cabal being brought down by a divine hyper-capable hero figure, presented in brief, enigmatic installments by a secret insider, framed as a real-time SVU political thriller, with audience participation and camaraderie. It tickles so many lowbrow dopamine triggers. An AI trained on prime time viewing and the Hollywood box office might produce something like this. I'm largely in agreement with your take on things but sometimes I have to step back and recognize the Q saga is masterful in its dumbness.

Travis View posted:

Q is clearly somebody. Or a group of people. And this somebody or somebodies is well-versed in conspiracy theories, persistent enough to keep posting for nearly a year, and highly defensive against anyone who calls bullshit on QAnon. Which means, unfortunately, the only way to guess the true identity of QAnon is to create your own conspiracy theory.

There are currently six skeptical theories that explain the real origin of the QAnon posts.
1. 4chan Trolls
2. Conspiracy Theory Scammers
3. Live Action Role Play (LARP)
4. Russian PsyOp
5. Deep State Pied Piper Operation
6. Trump Aide Dan Scavino

To be clear, many of these theories aren’t mutually exclusive. Q may be multiple groups acting together, each with different goals for QAnon. But these six theories are the most commonly cited possible explanations.
Here’s a break down of each theory and what they mean:

OwlFancier posted:

There is, however, a school of thought that broadly takes the position that conspiracies are responsible for large scale changes in the world. Specifically they assign a lot of weight to particular conspiracies and generally subscribe to the idea that it is primarily the actions of a few major conspirators which are responsible for instigating major social trends, and further they usually extoll the need to understand the specifics of these conspiracies for... reasons. The reasons are generally pretty unclear honestly because they rarely have a suggestion for what to do with that information and if they do it's usually clearly insane.

I would suggest that line of thinking is faulty because change is not driven by individuals or conspiracies, yes the capacity exists for some individuals to wield a lot of power but even they do not have the ability to actually cohesively control large populations of people. They can create pressures but ultimately the end result is not possible to precisely control, as the pressures interact with the much larger number of pressures created by the structure of society which no one person has any control over, even very powerful people. Because if they did we would not see a lot of things happening that are happening, stuff like BLM and the coronavirus outbreak.

A much more useful approach is observing trends in the kinds of pressures that society creates, which is basically marxism. Class theory. Theories about systemic racism, poo poo like that. A complete lack of interest in the specifics of what individual people are doing, because you rightly understand that that's basically indistinguishable from celebrity gossip and while you can spend a great deal of time going over the specifics of who said what to who about what and when and where, it's all basically pointless, because it's interminable, that sort of nonsense will go on forever and you can waste your life learning all the details (and conspiracy theorists do, because it varies between hobby and obsession for them) but you can easily sidestep all of that by just saying "the wealthy have a class interest to oppose the interests of the working class" and that entirely describes the issue".

The specifcs about who said what to who are just... not relevant? And you can't do any sort of useful politics by engaging with it. Because it's just a loving soap opera. Nobody who isn't already invested will care and nobody who is invested is poltiically useful because all that really matters to them is this weird political celebrity driven storybook. Which is exactly what the qanon nuts are doing. It's just... stories created with characters they recognize off the tv and from pop culture, doing pop culture scandals and mixed in with pop christian mythology and poo poo. It's fanfiction.

Obsessing over the specifics of who is really behind X Y and Z and who they know and how it's all connected maaan is the same thing, when you come down to it. The specific people don't matter, if it wasn't them it would be somebody else, they're entirely interchangeable, the organizations are interchangeable, none of it matters. You can reduce it all usefully down to the simple observation that wealth buys influence, the specific kind of influence is irrelevant, because it buys influence literally everywhere, and you can spend time obsessing over every little minutia of that but all it does is make you look crazy and probably drive you crazy too.

The obsession with russian hackers and bots and conspiracies to manipulate knife edge elections and deep state think tanks and poo poo is just another kind of brainworms, it's focusing on the specifics to avoid engaging with the large scale reality, which is why lovely centrists spend so much time doing it. Like it's their first exposure to the concept of the effect of wealth and power on supposedly democratic processes, and rather than engage with the full extent of that concept they just focus on the minutiae of the last time that bit them, personally, in the arse in a form they find aesthetically distasteful, rather than the systemic problem.

Even if it was a conspiracy which I still don't really see a reason to assume, it's utterly indistinguishable from the entire systemic effect of wealth and power on ideas in society. And that effect is why it's entirely possible it wasn't even a conspiracy to begin with, the ground was laid for it by decades, generations of pressure and contradictions from and within society. To the point that it could easily have been set off by someone shitposting. If it could have been done by accident then clearly the importance of the specifics of spooky organizations being involved is close to zero, if all they achieved is something that could have been achieved by anybody.

Again, I come back to the comparison of coronavirus. Something like it was going to happen eventually, the conditions of global society have been primed for a deadly global disease outbreak for decades, so where it started from and why is simply irrelevant, because more of them are going to happen until the structure of our society changes so that they don't.

And this also applies to climate change too, which is also going to keep happening until our society restructures in a way to prevent it, because the reason it's happening and the reason there is so much resistance to doing anything about it is again, because it makes people money in the short term to not do anything about it. Everything is driven by class interests, not a handful of people in a dark room somewhere pulling the levers of the world. It is countless people all acting as a flock, it is currents and forces in the great big ocean of society, people in dark rooms are a reflection of those currents, not the people directing them.

OwlFancier posted:

It's not novel that reactionary assholes are being reactionary assholes, though? Spiritual hippyism has always had a really strong racist streak. The entire point of it, ultimately, is exoticization and fetishism of other cultures to turn them into commodities that can be sold to people who are experiencing alienation because of the emptyness of their consumption driven lives, but who have no actual solution to that other than trying to find something to consume that offers fulfillment. It's full of old, well to do white people who, incredibly, are often raging racist assholes who hate "politics" which is to say anything that challenges their position as old, well to do white people.

I don't think it's "gone" anywhere, places across the world are seeing the formation of large sections of society into a coherent voting bloc composed of increasingly old and lovely assholes, because the right as a whole is out of ideas and is simply going all out on voter suppression, media control, disenfranchisement of alternatives, and desperately trying to activate as many of the miserable, lovely people in society as it can. And I see no reason to suggest that this particular phenomenon is the cause of that rather than it is simply a symptom of it. Though clearly it feeds back into their worldview. But the reason it took off is because of the conditions that have been created for a very long time across the world, and if it wasn't this it would simply be something else, it is something else, it's manifesting in countless ways, it's the reason behind TERFs, behind cop worship, behind lovely comedians suggesting that the world is wrong because young people don't like their lovely dated comedy, behind establishment media outlets decrying everything in the world as infringing on their monopoly over what people can think, it's behind opposition to climate activism. You are seeing the unification of a new class interest, which is to say the old and lovely against the young and woke. The old hate everything about the young and also control a disproportionate amount of the resources, and the young can only get their political interests enacted by disenfranchising the old and, critically, the political parties of capital, which have aligned themselves squarely with the old and socially conservative.

Now that's probably going to realign at some point though gently caress knows when or how, but I really don't see the need to go on about conspiracy theories when you can just... look at the loving world? qanon is not inspiring this poo poo, it's derivative from it. When the trend is happening everywhere it makes no sense to go "aha you see it is a grand conspiracy to create this coherent political ideology through this theory" when no, the cohesion is happening organically everywhere. It's a reaction to the increasing radicalism socially and economically of those at the bottom of society.

But critically the attitudes and people comprising that reaction have always existed. They've always been lovely, in no small part, I think, because the liberal project of the last few decades has not been willing to actually extirpate their attitudes, merely to sideline them, while often paying lip service to them for votes. Now that negligence is coming home to roost, while those who actually believe the platitudes we have been spoon fed and who have formed actual real ideologies around them are trying to fight it.

Uglycat posted:

I hang out with those hippies. Have done so for 4 years, travelling on a brightly painted bus.

The Q stuff is present in those communities, and it stands out as uncanny. This stuff was weaponized, and those populations were deliberately targeted.