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Grondoth posted:Who is Jim Watkins tl;dr incoming. IMO it is impossible to get a grip on what Qanon has become without some back story on the history of 8chan/8kun -- especially since at two founders' remove from this very site, 8chan/8kun is SA’s hosed-up internet grandchild. It's no secret that Jim Watkins and his son Ron are two people most likely to be currently posting as Q on 8kun.top, which they own. Watkins definitely isn't the original ARG-y 4chan Q, or whoever once thought 'Matlock' was a Highly Sekrit Password, or Coleman Rogers, who rather memorably once posted as Q live while broadcasting on his Q-interpreting channel, Patriot’s Soapbox. Watkins is (probably) the current Q because he persuaded 8chan founder Fredrick Brennan that the Philippines was a cheaper place for someone with osteogenesis imperfecta to hire a live-in nurse than the US, then then prised the debatable 'asset' of 8chan ownership away from him during the period of 2014-2016 (this is a long article from Wired on the saga). Watkins Sr. is no Roger Stone. Watkins Sr. is an amoral sleazebag whose notion of dogwhistles when it comes to antisemitism and race war are...unsubtle (his first attempts to monetise 8chan involved users paying with cryptocurrency to boost their posts to the top of boards, a feature he called 'King of the Shekel'; 8chan users did not object to the name, but did not like being asked to pay-to-win). Even when boosted by the celebrity of Q, his ownership of 8chan/8kun has not made him into more than a well-off racist grifter, since that's probably all he aspires to be. He posts on twitter as @RQueeninc, also as @isitwetyet (the handle of a site to flog Q merch which I suggest no-one visits). Until the advent of Q, 8chan didn't make Watkins rich and it got him into hot water after three separate spree shooters posted their Race War manifestos to his site. 8chan was shunned by hosting services and went offline for 93 days. Then, to the lasting misfortune of us all, it came back as 8kun.top in November 2019, and Q began posting again. Now, if someone wants to point out that hosting a notorious site like 8chan/8kun and defending it from attempts to down it is pricy and difficult, and that after it was being harried from host to host in the wake of three separate white-supremacist shooters using it as a manifesto drop, 8kun unsuccessfully tried out a Russian-run bulletproof host (as 8kun.net) in November, just before it popped up as 8kun.top under the odd umbrella of ‘VanwaTech’ (ostensibly run out of Vancouver by a guy in his early twenties called Nick Lim), and that all this is may bear further investigation, I fully agree. And if someone else points out that it's remarkable that Jim Watkins hasn't been invited for questioning by police in the Philippines (Fredrick Brennan has, and they found nothing to take any further with him) since Duterte is such a famously straight arrow, my  is pretty much at your service. After Brennan started turning up the heat on Watkins, an arrest warrant was indeed issued in the Philippines...for Brennan, for the crime of slandering Watkins on the internet (actually a thing in the Philippines). You’d presume this was because Brennan was accusing Watkins of orchestrating a massive disinformation conspiracy theory for both political and financial gain. In fact, it was supposedly because Brennan had called him senile. Yeah. Brennan's health is fragile and he feared being slung in a Philippine hoosegow; he fled the country for the US and AFAIK is now in LA, where he spends his time gathering increasingly-convincing evidence that Watkins is Q and posting it to Twitter.So yeah, I don’t like Jim ‘Mr. Bad Example’ Watkins. But rather than a subtle plot, QAnon itself feels to me like a katamari conspiramacy that has bounced through several peoples' shaky 'ownership', snowballing to its current size by the power of social media, and booster events like Epstein and COVID-19. That’s not to say it doesn’t have most (all?) features of a psyop, it’s just that IMO it’s an organically-grown folk psyop that’s hijacked ARG-esque presentation and the ‘if you liked X, you might also like Y’ algorithms social media sites use (it's even on Pinterest and Etsy) to create turbo user engagement. I am fairly certain that for those on this board trying to pull people out of QAnon (more power to you, and I may join you), there are more productive routes than claiming it's a Russian conspiracy, if for no other reason than QAnon believers are primed to expect this very line. The sheer grift of QAnon is astounding, and Watkins absolutely radiates grift. Apologies for all the Watkins/QAnon  , but I guess here's as good a place as any and it may interest some.Edit: I originally linked to the wrong Verge article RE: the arrest warrant on Brennan for the high crime of calling someone senile online. Now corrected. Carnival of Shrews fucked around with this message at 12:10 on Aug 24, 2020 |
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Aug 24, 2020 10:43
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While it is fun to call whoever currently runs Q a perverted freak posting on the racist spree shooter/child porn forum, the role of silicon valley social media can't be understated. Q people, like maga people, are on average extremely stupid. Therefore, they naturally naturally generate high levels of Engagement: something that can be packaged and sold as to businesses: not just weird niche bullshit like gold and mypillows, but actual multinationals. I can't even conclude that there was a high level conspiracy within the upper echelons of Facebook/Google to foster Q, it could be as simple as one or two employees trying to hit their KPIs: huh this network population has really high Engagement metrics, let's make sure the algorithm serves them up what they want, keep them and the companies we sell their info to happy
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Aug 24, 2020 14:50
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Pence was apparently just officially renominated. Causing any Qanon heads to explode that we’re expecting jfk jr?
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Aug 24, 2020 15:28
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Bucky Fullminster posted:stephen moylineuxph Was this a typo or a joke about his name Either way I laughed
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Aug 24, 2020 15:39
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Ambitious Spider posted:Pence was apparently just officially renominated. Causing any Qanon heads to explode that we’re expecting jfk jr? Why would it? They decide what's real to them, not the actual facts.
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Aug 24, 2020 16:49
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Please, as if Trump could tolerate sharing the limelight with a family with more star power than his.
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Aug 24, 2020 17:01
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Ambitious Spider posted:Pence was apparently just officially renominated. Causing any Qanon heads to explode that we’re expecting jfk jr? Tapping the sign that says TRUST THE PLAN
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Aug 24, 2020 17:18
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Phobophilia posted:While it is fun to call whoever currently runs Q a perverted freak posting on the racist spree shooter/child porn forum, the role of silicon valley social media can't be understated. Q people, like maga people, are on average extremely stupid. Therefore, they naturally naturally generate high levels of Engagement: something that can be packaged and sold as to businesses: not just weird niche bullshit like gold and mypillows, but actual multinationals. IMO the most worrying thing about QAnon is at no point did there need to be a long-case conspiracy to create it. The 'griftiness' of QAnon may not have the cynical glitter of large-scale corporate manipulation, but IMO it is still a massive reason for its spread, especially in the wake of the abrupt job losses caused by COVID. QAnon has many features of a MLM scheme, complete with people who've quit their day jobs to become professional slingers of Q-'interpretation', and/or merch. Jim Watkins must be frustrated beyond measure if owning the site that Q exclusively posts to hasn't made him rich as Croesus (which I guess he might be, but...I don't think he'd have the commitment to carry on the charade if he was already rolling in Q-cash. Perhaps I underestimate him). Phobophilia posted:I can't even conclude that there was a high level conspiracy within the upper echelons of Facebook/Google to foster Q, it could be as simple as one or two employees trying to hit their KPIs: huh this network population has really high Engagement metrics, let's make sure the algorithm serves them up what they want, keep them and the companies we sell their info to happy It's always possible that Q-driven 'Suggested for You' rabbit holes were humanly tweaked to increase their pull -- I just don't think it's essential. They've been honed for years to be exquisitely reactive to what they determine the viewer might be interested in. You like pics of salad in jars? You'll probably like pics of handcrafted soap, or of oil infused with herbs. When QAnon was trending heavily on Pinterest during lockdown I saw cross-pollination between pins about dispelling hexes or warding off psychic vampires, and ones involving Q material about Evil and Darkness. I think that is a key feature of people liable to get sucked into QAnon who apparently come from the other side of the political spectrum -- not low intelligence, but the firm belief in a dualist battle between Good and Evil, Light and Dark. Someone who believes that, even in the most New Age way possible, is IMO at significant risk of being redpilled. The other thing to keep in mind is that many people have never tried immersing themselves in an ARG, any more than they've tried LARPing or a tabletop RPG. Of course it's a fantastically grippy experience to be part of a story that you're helping to tell, where the story-controller feels as if they're leaving clues just for you, and reacting to what you do. I suspect that someone nerdy enough to have sampled any of the above three forms of entertainment would classify Q as being along the same lines, as soon as they encountered it. But for a lot of folk, QAnon has been the first time they've encountered such a storytelling technique, ever. And it's strong stuff.
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Aug 24, 2020 23:31
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I have learned a lot about Jim Watkins.
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Aug 25, 2020 01:48
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Carnival of Shrews posted:When QAnon was trending heavily on Pinterest during lockdown I saw cross-pollination between pins about dispelling hexes or warding off psychic vampires, and ones involving Q material about Evil and Darkness. I think that is a key feature of people liable to get sucked into QAnon who apparently come from the other side of the political spectrum -- not low intelligence, but the firm belief in a dualist battle between Good and Evil, Light and Dark. Someone who believes that, even in the most New Age way possible, is IMO at significant risk of being redpilled. It's a fertile substrate for anybody who already believes any other conspiracy theory, because it naturally fills in all the gaps and links them up with their other beliefs at the same time -- of course there's a Cabal, they're the ones who are killing kids with vaccines/making cancer victims get irradiated instead of taking all-natural laetrile/hiding the truth about vibrations and the healing frequency/etc. Then they wade out into the deeper world of Q and find even more new theories to plug into their belief system by mingling with the people who've been pulled in from other communities.
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Aug 25, 2020 01:58
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It's like a conspiracy theory parasite, it just takes any existing belief system and latches on with a hearty "and be sure to add WE HATE PEDOPHILES!"
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Aug 25, 2020 02:10
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https://twitter.com/mtgreenee/status/1298349981083013121?s=19
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Aug 25, 2020 22:05
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Snowy posted:The Behind the Bastards episode with 8chans founder tells the story pretty well afaik This is a brilliant series I hadn't heard before, thank you. VitalSigns posted:Was this a typo or a joke about his name hahaha the latter. I'm now zooming out, and can pretty much trace this whole thing all the way back to Robert Welch and the JBS: Alex Jones was exposed to them as a child He picked up the torch in the 90's / 00's, takes it to a new level in the digital age The JBS rejoined the mainstream conservative movement in 2010, Tea Party emerges Stone eyes Trump Sees potential in Jones to that end Here we are Edit - with McCarthy obviously having laid a lot of the groundwork for Welch Bucky Fullminster fucked around with this message at 01:30 on Aug 26, 2020 |
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Aug 26, 2020 00:48
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Was following the situation in Kenosha and look what pops up in the footage https://twitter.com/IGD_News/status/1298591303018491905?s=20
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Aug 26, 2020 20:45
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I came back to this thread because these showed up on my Facebook feed and was wondering what the hivemind thought. I spent about an hour and a half picking through them and the supporting links. While there's a lot of "yeah, that's suspicious," none of it is anywhere close to conclusive, with the exception of links to Watkins's pen collection, weird way of writing dates, and The GoldWater. And those three points need expansion and further investigation to conclusively say that Jim Watkins is Q. Both of those articles read like the liberal equivalent of a Qanon follower--a stream of consciousness throwing as many correlations as possible at a wall and hoping one sticks. To get any meaning, you really need to pick the poo poo out of the articles that have merit and that takes time. The only thing I can agree with about the Jim = Q hypothesis is that there is a high probability that Jim Watkins or one of his associates is connected to whoever the current Qanon poster (or group of posters) is. Beyond that, there's nothing damning, just a bunch of little correlations that suggest more conclusive evidence exists somewhere.
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Aug 27, 2020 17:28
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Carnival of Shrews posted:It's always possible that Q-driven 'Suggested for You' rabbit holes were humanly tweaked to increase their pull -- I just don't think it's essential. They've been honed for years to be exquisitely reactive to what they determine the viewer might be interested in. You like pics of salad in jars? You'll probably like pics of handcrafted soap, or of oil infused with herbs.
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Aug 27, 2020 19:44
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Carnival of Shrews posted:They've been honed for years to be exquisitely reactive to what they determine the viewer might be interested in. I wish they’d figure me out a little faster, they still steer me to clickbaity youtubers and I never watch that stuff Also I’m glad I started listening to Rabbit Hole, it’s a good podcast.
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Aug 27, 2020 20:49
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Warmachine posted:I came back to this thread because these showed up on my Facebook feed and was wondering what the hivemind thought. I spent about an hour and a half picking through them and the supporting links. While there's a lot of "yeah, that's suspicious," none of it is anywhere close to conclusive, with the exception of links to Watkins's pen collection, weird way of writing dates, and The GoldWater. And those three points need expansion and further investigation to conclusively say that Jim Watkins is Q. Black, Manafort and Stone, literally built a business on selling foreign agents access to American politicians. It's a matter of Public Record. Listen to the Manafort episode of behind the bastards. They basically created the industry of subversive political influence. You can see it all yourself. There is indeed a lot of "yeah, that's suspicious", and three things you even appear to admit ARE conclusive. You have all the evidence in front of you. There is nothing to contradict it. It seems the only reason to not believe it is that we don't have them on tape signing a contract saying "Hey Jim Can You Make This Q Thing For Us".
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Aug 28, 2020 06:01
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Bucky Fullminster posted:This lays it out about as clear as can be: What in particular about these articles do you find convincing?
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Aug 28, 2020 21:12
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Helsing posted:What in particular about these articles do you find convincing? I'm convinced by the first article because it opens with "Hello". Lmao
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Aug 28, 2020 21:37
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Glory to Italia!
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Bucky Fullminster posted:Black, Manafort and Stone, literally built a business on selling foreign agents access to American politicians. It's a matter of Public Record. Listen to the Manafort episode of behind the bastards. They basically created the industry of subversive political influence. You can see it all yourself. There is indeed a lot of "yeah, that's suspicious", and three things you even appear to admit ARE conclusive. The problem is, proof he's involved doesn't equate to proof that he "is Q." The tweet seems really quick to declare him to be the head of the operation, when it seems more likely that he's just one head of the hydra and we still need to figure out the rest of it.
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Aug 28, 2020 23:35
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Helsing posted:What in particular about these articles do you find convincing? Wrong articles
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Aug 28, 2020 23:48
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https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/1299806359106596867?s=21
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Aug 29, 2020 21:44
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ILL Machina posted:I'm convinced by the first article because it opens with "Hello". Lmao Personally, what really clinched it was when the author establishes their qualifications at the start of the article by noting, among other accomplishments, that they had won a Primetime Emmy and had eight patents.
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Aug 29, 2020 23:35
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WeedlordGoku69 posted:he's just one head of the hydra and we still need to figure out the rest of it. That's what I'm saying Helsing posted:What in particular about these articles do you find convincing? I don't think they require further elaboration Helsing posted:Personally, what really clinched it was when the author establishes their qualifications at the start of the article by noting, among other accomplishments, that they had won a Primetime Emmy and had eight patents. Oh, right, that's the tack you're taking. Just straight up Literal ad hominems. And not even very good ones. Do you still not think this might be a bit more serious? Dick Trauma posted:https://twitter.com/QanonAnonymous/status/1299731517392826368?s=20 Same thing happened in London's Trafalga square the other day. People have been flagging this for a long time now. e - Video of the London event, in long form, from good ol' Sputnik News: https://www.facebook.com/SputnikNews/videos/681505875781800/ Bucky Fullminster fucked around with this message at 06:20 on Aug 30, 2020 |
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Aug 30, 2020 05:07
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https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/1299806359106596867
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Aug 30, 2020 08:44
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Bucky Fullminster posted:
Sorry they didn't like your article 
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Aug 30, 2020 16:30
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Bucky Fullminster posted:I don't think they require further elaboration They are the digital equivalent of some cork board and red string connecting a bunch of tendentiously linked news reports - most of which are themselves just short form descriptions of a report or a congressional hearing - to form a vague narrative that offers an exceptional and poorly supported explanation for a phenomenon that doesn't actually seem to require any such special explanation in the first place. My favorite bit might be where the author cites this yahoo news article on at least three or four different occasions, at one time prefacing their hyper link by saying that it "clearly shows that this was a Russian intel operation". The sum total of the evidence presented in that article short 500 word length article? That an anonymously owned website called antifa.com was registered in Russia in 2013, and that this website linked to Joe Biden's campaign website for one afternoon before going offline. That is literally the entirety of the "evidence" which in the authors mind is an undeniable example of a sinister high level Russian intelligence plot. quote:Oh, right, that's the tack you're taking. Just straight up Literal ad hominems. And not even very good ones. Do you still not think this might be a bit more serious? The author explicitly introduced their eight patents and their Primetime Emmy as evidence that they should be taken seriously.
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Aug 30, 2020 18:41
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 for gently caress sake...
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Aug 30, 2020 21:10
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Bucky Fullminster posted:a twitch streamer called Destiny, who debates far-right fuckwits you bad faith lying dogshit motherfucker
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Aug 30, 2020 22:46
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He does, or did, do that, but yes that's far from all he does.
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Aug 30, 2020 22:55
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Destiny is a lib who went on a conservative dunking spree so people thought he was of the left, but no he was just a lib and conservatives are easy to dunk on. Here he is 'debating' with someone on the left: (I'm too lazy to look it up, I think it's Non Compete, the breadtuber who moved to Vietnam. Feel free to correct this.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaIoGJyA9PQ
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Aug 30, 2020 23:18
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oh yeah the guy who basically caused Jontron to metaphorically goatse his audience with his views
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Aug 31, 2020 00:49
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JohnLovely posted:you bad faith lying dogshit motherfucker Which part of that do you think is a lie or bad faith? I was describing the context of what happened in a podcast about paths in and out of radicalization, and that is 100% accurate. I had never heard of destiny. It's disappointing to learn that he has that attitude to vietnam, but it doesn't change what I said. The point is not the quality of destiny's character, it's that watching far right fuckwits get dunked on while plain video games can and has reversed the radicalisation process. \/\/ Ugh, disgusting. Interesting though. Reveals a bit more of psychological infrastructure going on. Bucky Fullminster fucked around with this message at 01:07 on Aug 31, 2020 |
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Aug 31, 2020 00:59
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I have some bad news about destiny https://twitter.com/gutiangang/status/1299902743092502533?s=21
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Aug 31, 2020 01:01
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Helsing posted:Russian What do you make of Sputnik News broadcasting a 4 hour video of the London covid/Q protests? https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=681505875781800&ref=watch_permalink  Edit - and further to this, what do you make of Russian interference in the 2016 election? The hacking of the DNC, the IRA astroturfing events and using the troll farms and bot networks, etc? The prior activities of Manafort, Page, Papadopalopalous, Flynn, Trump himself, etc? Bucky Fullminster fucked around with this message at 02:34 on Aug 31, 2020 |
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Aug 31, 2020 01:18
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Looks very pro-statue. Probably verging on anti-racism critical. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 01:27 on Aug 31, 2020 |
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Aug 31, 2020 01:22
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Carnival of Shrews posted:tl;dr incoming. IMO it is impossible to get a grip on what Qanon has become without some back story on the history of 8chan/8kun -- especially since at two founders' remove from this very site, 8chan/8kun is SA’s hosed-up internet grandchild. Just wanted to add to this that in his 90 minute interview/duologue thing with Robert Evans on the 'Behind the Bastards' podcast someone helpfully linked earlier (which I must repeat is absolutely fantastic and everyone should go listen to now, at least the eps on Bernays, Buchanan, Erik Prince, Manafort, Stone, Shaffley, Adams, Koch, Jones, Adams)[/i], that Frederick Brennan said that 8chan does not and basically cannot make money. Now, attention and notoriety is of course a reward of its own for some people, but the fact that it's not a cost-positive exercise in and of itself is worth noting.
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Aug 31, 2020 03:02
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Wait so this is all Russiagate poo poo? Astronaut_it_always_was.jpg
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Aug 31, 2020 03:28
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Bucky Fullminster posted:Just wanted to add to this that in his 90 minute interview/duologue thing with Robert Evans on the 'Behind the Bastards' podcast someone helpfully linked earlier (which I must repeat is absolutely fantastic and everyone should go listen to now, at least the eps on Bernays, Buchanan, Erik Prince, Manafort, Stone, Shaffley, Adams, Koch, Jones, Adams)[/i], that Frederick Brennan said that 8chan does not and basically cannot make money. Now, attention and notoriety is of course a reward of its own for some people, but the fact that it's not a cost-positive exercise in and of itself is worth noting. You wanna take a second, running start on this rambling run-on sentence-filled thing? It's really hard to parse.
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Aug 31, 2020 05:47
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