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So I have been thinking for some time about how to explain my perspective what Q Anon is doing, how he is appealing to people successfully, and what his apparent goals are. It is my contention that Q is not a single individual but a small group of individuals with access to a reasonable amount of resources, and I believe the most likely culprit to be Russian intelligence. Q is using an extremely elaborate form of a type of occult/paranormal scam that I call the "Nostradamus Hustle". All other examples of the scam that I am personally aware of are pretty straightforward demonstrations of a person with a personality disorder grifting on the gullible, and these operations are almost always either solo operated or operated by a very small group with a very clear way to make money off of the scam. Q Anon is the only time I have ever seen someone operating this scam without a clear financial incentive. It's not a very easy scam to pull off and psychopaths with enough talent to do so are just not easy to come by. The Nostradamus Hustle functions by first creating a stylized form of gibberish that contains disjointed words and phrases, and then convincing people that secret information that indicates how future events will turn out can be had by decoding your gibberish. In the case of Nostradamus he accomplished this task through the use of quatrains; whereas in the case of the people behind the Bible Code they essentially use a mathematical formula that transforms the Torah into a word search, and in the case of HalfPastHuman (the people behind the infamous WebBot that was very popular during the height of the 2012 doomsday fad) they generate complete gibberish that is claimed to be the result of an algorithm that tracks changes over time in how people use language online. I have included an example of each below:  ( I used an example of the Bible Code generated using the King James Bible instead of the Torah for ease of understanding) A sample of a Web Bot ALTA report posted:These areas also indicate that [revenge assassinations] will be taking place over the latter third of As you can see in the above examples the general format of the scam is pretty straightforward- create a bunch of gibberish and then convince people somehow that your gibberish contains actionable information about future events. Once you've gotten enough people to buy in you can basically keep the scam running indefinately so long as you pay constant attention to your audience and always feed them exactly what they want to hear. The only downside to this particular scam is that it requires an all-consuming focus on your audience, you can't simply half-rear end things or just throw things out in the proper format. You have to expend continue oil significant effort to keep prodding your audience into going along with giving you money, and in order to do that your audience has to be being told what they want to hear. (This is why 8 years ago the Web Bot was constantly talking about the 2012 doomsday scenario, whereas now it's mostly focused on cryptocurrency speculating. What the audience wanted to hear shifted and the person running the Web Bot shifted their scam to accommodate.) The evidence that leads me to conclude that Q Anon on is a Russian intelligence is complicated; in the first place I've never seen a Nostradamus Hustle conducted purely for shots and giggles without any attempt to acquire financial gain or public attention, the psychological toolkit required to successfully run this scam basically only appears and individuals who would use this scam for some sort of personal gain. Running a Nostradamus hustle is a pretty all-consuming affair, at least one individual operating the scam must be extremely tuned in to everything their audience of suckers is saying or doing in order to keep the scam running. In the second place I've never seen a Nostradamus Hustle that seemed designed specifically to drive Compaction Cycle's among Narrativists- while Narrativists are a frequent target audience for this sort of scam, it's usually just to relieve them of their money. I've never before seeing a Nostradamus hustle that was seemingly set up just to provide a venue for a huge number of Narrativists to compact over and over. Normally people running this scam try to avoid Compaction Cycles because it shrinks their customer base. I also think that the selection of first 4chan and now 8Chan to operate this scam on only make sense if it's a Russian intelligence operation. As Uglycat can attest, it is much easier for a small group of individuals to manipulate consensus on the 'chans then people realize. The entire project chanology was launched via a campaign of creating false consensus on 4chan that was engaged in by the hacker group Marblecaek. I believe that Russian intelligence operatives arehanging around Q Anon threads and strategically posting to drive the conversation in a desired direction, I believe this is why they probably switched from 4chan to 8Chan. Once Q Anon started to pick up steam it was getting too much attention on 4chan for the manipulators to handle, so they switched to the much lower traffic 8Chan in order to make their task easier. Personally I don't think there is any specific endgame or specific goal for the Q Anon scam, I think they are just going to run it as long as they can to keep driving Compaction Cycles and keep Americans radicalizing. Eventually the scam will probably come crashing down once Mueller indicts Trump, and when that happens their are going to be a great deal of extremely furious and confused Narrativists who will be extremely amenable to adopting any new radical Narrative (particularly one that provides an outlet for the violent rage they will be feeling at that point) that appears within the right-wing media echosphere. In essence even once the Q Anon scam falls apart, Russian intelligence will still profit handsomely because it will still be very easy for them to just insert whatever desired narrative (or perhaps even another Nostradamus Hustle) into the same audience. Prester Jane fucked around with this message at 14:37 on Mar 27, 2018 |
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Mar 27, 2018 14:34
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Personally I think the Russians are the most likely culprits, but it's entirely possible that there is someone else behind it. It wouldn't take state actor level resources to pull this off, there's plenty of billionaires and/or political actors that would be perfectly capable of executing an operation like this. I am about 99.9% certain that this is a scripted op being conducted by multiple individuals in a coordinated fashion though. While it's conceivable that this could be the work of a lone troll, it is my conclusion that the balance of evidence very strongly suggests otherwise at this time. This does require a pretty sophisticated understanding of American politics to execute though, it's current function at present is to enable a huge and diverse group of Narrativists to psychologically live within their personal Inner Narrative if in an environment where they are practically drowning in Narrative Dysphoria. Under any context having this many people be this disconnected from reality for any appreciable period of time would cause significant disruption in the affected population. Under present conditions it is highly likely to continue driving the emerging wave of violence that we are seeing play out at present. It's like a strongest sustained wind blowing on a bonfire. It keeps increasing the flame and heat the longer it goes on until eventually the bonfire escapes the fire ring. Edit: chitoryu12 posted:Would a Russian have used "Matlock" as a password or something actually in Russian? Not an unfair question, but the kind of people who are this manipulative are also often extremely hubristic. Also: https://twitter.com/prayingmedic/status/975899309383172096?s=20 Double edit: This RT interview makes it painfully obvious that Q Anon is a Russian psyop imo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBI_dTY4fsc Prester Jane fucked around with this message at 17:04 on Mar 27, 2018 |
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Mar 27, 2018 16:02
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I personally think everyone interested in understanding the psychological manipulation that underlies the Q Anon phenomenon should take the 5 minutes to watch the video below. This is a Narrativist walking you through how minor little coincidences provide her with Narrative Validation- thus enabling her to psychologically exist within the fantasy world of her Inner Narrative. Note the genuine psychological relief and earnest optimism for the future that she is experiencing as a result of having her Inner Narrative validated. Also know that she is clearly not alone and having this specific reaction to the DoD tweet, as numerous other individuals in the replies to that tweet are clearly experiencing the same euphoria that she is. When the Q Anon delusion is eventually taken from her she will experience a tremendous sense of disorientation, rage, fear, and hopelessness. She will be exceedingly vulnerable at that point to becoming highly radicalized/pushed into taking more dramatic action, and she will not be alone. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_jy9XWrtVk From the perspective of the woman in that video (or really anyone who has latched onto a source of Narrative Validation this deeply) attacking Q Anon is akin to attacking her personal sense of security and joy, (her source of hope for the future)and she will react by lashing out viciously against anyone who makes her doubt the authenticity of Q. As she is a representative example of the norm of Q supporters, you can see how insanely easy it is for Compaction Cycles to occur in this social environment. Anyone who challenges the reality that Q is presenting will be rapidly forced right out of any group of Q supporters, steadily driving the radicalization of the affected communities. For those curious Q Anon threads on freerepublic.com are currently some of the most active threads on the website, frequently getting over 2000 replies in short order. Prester Jane fucked around with this message at 19:24 on Mar 27, 2018 |
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Mar 27, 2018 19:20
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Luigi's Discount Porn Bin posted:Aside from Matlock, Q also disappears for weeks at a time, which seems to go against the idea that it's a professional. These are all very fair points. My contention with the RT interview is that it demonstrates that both Q and Russian propaganda are at least on the exact same page with regards to both each other and the general narrative they are pushing about Trump being in a covert war against the Deep State. It could certainly be just opportunism on the part of our RT, but that wouldn't necessarily explain why Q seems to parrot the Russian line on pretty much everything without fail. To me it seems very likely that the Narrative's that Q and Russian psyops are pushing are identical because they are acting more or less in coordination. It could be just crass opportunism on both sides, but I personally doubt it at this point. Also Q's occasional disappearances would not necessarily preclude the actions of a competent actor, you need your Mystic to be somewhat unpredictable and inaccessible in order to make his messages more important when he does send them. Personally I don't think you need any more than a small team of perhaps 10 individuals to create the Q Anon phenomenon and to create false consensus around it on the chans, but I do feel that it would require a pretty specialized set of talents in order to do so, to say nothing of the in-depth knowledge of American politics and culture that are on display. What I'm saying is it would mostly require some specialized know-how that doesn't come cheap, but but beyond that it doesn't require anything particularly special or resource intensive.
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Mar 27, 2018 19:59
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Ratoslov posted:I think all you need to do to be Qanon is be someone who's good at writing nonsense and cold-reading /pol/ jerks, and who also reads a lot of politics. The suckers want to believe. I fully agree with everything except the bolded bit. Knowing how to construct and write this specific sort of nonsense is actually a specialized skill that (in my experience) has been developed over a period of time through trial and error in individuals who possess the skill. Running a successful Nostradamus Hustle is not something that just any amoral sociopath with the right motivations can pull off, the skillset required is fairly rare in my experience. OwlFancier posted:It could as easily be a product of monkeys on typewriters, lots of people on the internet try to make memes and go viral, that one eventually succeeds doesn't suggest a cunning plan as much as an inevitability of sufficient attempts. I'm approaching this from the angle of studying the downstream impacts of Q Anon, as well as how those downstream impacts tie into the larger geopolitical picture. It doesn't require an actor with an agenda to get something desired to go viral on the internet, however I strongly contend that it almost certainly requires an actor with an agenda to have these kinds of specific downstream impacts on the overall conservative narrative. Four or five months ago it was exceedingly rare to see a Q anon reference on freerepublic for example, whereas now it is a very hotly discussed topic that virtually all of Freep is very familiar with at this point. In my view it is these Downstream a fax in conjunction with the apparent coordination between Q and the Russian government when it comes to the narratives they are pushing that leads me to very strongly suspect that this is the result of a purposeful actor with an agenda, and not just a highly talented troll. From my perspective watching how Q Anon operates is a bit like taking a walk through the forest and coming across a double row of 40 trees planted in a perfectly straight line. While those trees are very much still part of the forest, and while it is almost certain that the rest of the forest was Planet through entirely natural means, I would contend that this double row of 40 trees was almost certainly planted by human hands. To me Q Anon stands out as almost certainly being of artificial origin and being conducted with an intended purpose. I mean it's entirely possible that those trees found out that way through entirely natural means, I just find it to be extremely unlikely. Likewise would I view how Q operates and the downstream impacts he is having, I see a manipulator with a purpose. I will fully can see that that could just be an artifact of my schizophrenia, percieving purpose behind otherwise random occurrences is definitely a feature of my illness. Not the last with that caveat I still very strongly contend that Q Anon is the result of a deliberate act with an agenda, and that Russia is the most likely culprit. I could be entirely wrong and hope that as events play out we find out eventually one way or another. Prester Jane fucked around with this message at 20:33 on Mar 27, 2018 |
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Mar 27, 2018 20:31
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Before we continue on with this debate I just like to note with wry humor that we are in such a bizarre situation that it would seem that Occam's razor cuts in favor of this being the work of a solitary eccentric genius who is successfully manipulating the worldview of millions of people instead of some sort of political actor with an agenda accomplishing this task.OwlFancier posted:But right wing hysteria and conspiracy nuttery is self perpetuating though. The major change over the last decade or so is it migrating from the fringe radio to the main narrative, but that's a fairly logical progression if you consistently campaign on lies and religious fundamentalism though. I would argue that the net result of all this has been the creation of a population that is ripe for exact sort of psychological manipulation that Russia has been specializing in for the past decade. While it is certainly true that the Republican Party spent the better portion of a half-century stacking cordwood and pouring fuel on this bonfire, Q Anon is giving it some serious oxygen. quote:that they then regurgitate and create their own stories on those themes which serve as the talking point du jour doesn't indicate a conscious direction, it's right wing fanfiction, formed out of a morass of satanic panic and store brand religious imagery and age old racism and nationalism with a side of too many videogames and tom clancy novels, and the fact that all it achieves is chaos suggests that it isn't under anybody's control. I would argue that the goal is to increase chaos though. If this is indeed Russia then their goal would be to destabilize a foreign adversary by sowing chaos within the target population. It doesn't really matter so much the specifics of exactly how that chaos manifests, it will be injurius to the United States no matter what. This sort of psyop is perfect for sowing the specific kind of confusion amongst a targeted population that Russian psyops have been refining how to foment and exploit for the past decade or so. And for the price of a small crew of 10 people or so (very generous estimate) they would be getting a very high return on their investment in this case. From this perspective Q Anon would be just a more elaborate form of the exact sort of psychological warfare that we already know that Russia is engaging in against the US via social media and the internet. It would be a natural evolution for what they're already doing. Prester Jane fucked around with this message at 21:05 on Mar 27, 2018 |
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Mar 27, 2018 20:56
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OwlFancier posted:It's not the person throwing the matches that's responsible for the fire, as you say, when the fuel's been stacked up for decades. Though I would argue this is more like someone throwing petrol bombs into an ongoing forest fire. Sure technically it's contributing but really what's already there is pretty horrible to begin with. On this point I think we are in full agreement. I think where we disagree is that the person throwing the petrol knows what they are doing and has an agenda, and that the person throwing petrol isn't acting alone. Russia's just exploiting a mess we ourselves created, we already know that they're doing this in a wide variety of ways, Q Anon would just be a moderate evolution in everything they are already doing. (One more way they're trying to destabilise our country.) If Q Anon's pushed narratives were not aligning so perfectly with Russian propaganda goals, and if Russian propaganda outfits were not clearly supporting Q anon from time to time ( to say nothing of the fact that the rwm figures pushing Q Anon are the more Russia connected ones) I would be of the opinion that this was all just the work of a very talented troll. However everything taken in context points very strongly to Russia in my view. For example here is Alex Jones telling you very plainly that he is a self-aware Russian stooge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qX5ZbZJrY4 And we have the fact that info awards has word for word republished over a thousand RT articles over the past three years without so much as a peep of complaint from RT ( they have play dries material from practically everyone, but RT is by far the biggest source they steal from): Observer: Alex Jones stole content from kremlin-backed Russia Today. The Observer posted:The Russian state-sponsored website Russia Today (RT), the self-proclaimed “first Russian 24/7 English-language news channel which brings the Russian view on global news” provides a fascinating window into what pro-Russian news looks like. Currently boasting headlines like “Putin: US wants to disrupt upcoming Russian election” and “US Congress to spend $4.6 bn for ‘reassuring NATO allies’ as anti-Russia hysteria mounts,” the site spins information (or misinformation), drawing self-described “paleoconservative” InfoWars’ Alex Jones. As it turns, Jones’s far-right fandom may have gone a step too far. The FBI has been investigating collusion between Infowars, Breitbart, and Russia Today since last spring: McClatchy D.C. Bureau posted:
And finally here we have Alex Jones Shilling for Q Anon and clearly tying this all together it is narratives that favor Russian propaganda objectives: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6BXPFZjK2s So while I definitely could be wrong, I don't think it's much of a leap for Russia to be behind Q Anon. In all honesty I think it's a Perfectly Natural Evolution of everything we already know that they're doing. It makes sense that they would be continuing to experiment and finding more successful/elaborate ways to destabilise a target population by manipulating the narratives that dominate the political discussions of that target population. Prester Jane fucked around with this message at 21:59 on Mar 27, 2018 |
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Mar 27, 2018 21:49
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Luigi's Discount Porn Bin posted:He certainly flies into a roid rage about Schiff calling him a Russian stooge, but I don't see how you're getting "yes, I'm a Russian stooge" from this. Clinical narcissists like Alex Jones (it came out during his divorce hearing that he has a formal diagnosis of NPD) have a very particular way of reacting when you accuse them of something that they are both guilty of very afraid of being found out for. Specifically, they have that reaction. More or less every time. If you have experience dealing with narcissists , that video is one hell of an obvious tell. quote:
Necessary explanation? No. But in my view it is very much the most probable one based on the context in which this is all occurring. Also based on my experiences having fallen for several examples of the Nostradamus Shuffle myself over the years, and having Bend The Insider of a cult Network that was at one point discussing amongst ourselves how to execute this exact scam. Based on my experiences Q Anon is more than a little bit beyond what you would expect to see from just some random genius troll. I am fully grant you that Q Anon's writing is a cut bove what you see from the average bottom tier Russian troll, but that also makes sense because Q Anon wouldn't be a bottom tier Russian operative. It would require at least one individual with both the requisite psychological toolkit to create the gibberish posts that supporters fawns over as well as enough insight into the American psyche to target it so well.
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Mar 27, 2018 22:55
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Renaissance Spam posted:
FWIW that is more or less exactly what I thought the first dozen or so times I ran across Q Anon material, it was only after observeing Q Anon for several months that I came to the conclusion that it was very likely a Russian psyop. quote:the fact Q posts promote reverse engineering and passive activity ("oh this is what Q meant" or "don't worry everyone, Trump is gonna fix it") it feels less like an active operation and more someone playing into a fantasy. The "reverse engineering" behavior is a key feature of the Nostradamus Hustle and is a vital part of how this sort of psychological manipulation functions. You need people constantly going back to your gibberish looking for a fresh hit of Narrative Validation. I would ask you to go back and watch the earlier posted video of the woman describing her thought processes as she has her belief inQ Anon affirmed. She's getting a dopamine rush, she's basically getting high off of this, and while it's not as powerful as a drug high it's still a very addictive emotional experience that can create a dependency. Building that dependency is a key feature of how the Nostradamus Shuffle works- whenever your target audience is feeling insecure they come back to your material for a fresh dose of the feel goods. And that is also all that a hypothetical Russian operative would really need to achieve here. Just give as many people as possible a path to living in their delusions and becoming emotionally dependent on your material for doing so. If you achieve that your target population will inevitably continue radicalizing and causing disruption for everyone around them , especially once the delusion is eventually removed from them. They will react like addicts who have just had their stash taken from them, and it is not going to be pretty. Everything else beyond that is just gravy. There doesn't need to be a specific plan or detailed objective for the future except to take advantage of whatever opportunities organically arise. Narrativists will inevitably sow chaos into any culture or population in which they managed to gain significant control. The boring narrative it's you have, and the more Compaction Cycles said Narrativists have undergone the more chaos they are inevitably going to create for everyone who has to deal with them in real life. One way of looking at this is that Russia is essentially playing what is called "positional chess", they don't have any specific or a detailed strategy they're just making very good moves and waiting for opportunities to exploit to emerge from their opponents mistakes. Fanning the Flames of radicalization of the United States with something as simple as an internet deception operated by a small handful of individuals would be a very good positional move. I hope this debate isn't derailing the thread too much and if it is I'll stop, but in defending this position I've been steadily accruing some interesting little bits of information that seem to support my general thesis here. For example this political article I have some interesting tidbits. Politico: Russia pushes more "Deep State" hashtags. posted:
[URL=https://www.reddit.com/r/TopMindsOfReddit/comments/7osggb/topminds_too_woke_to_realize_whos_pushing_this_q/] I also came across these interesting quotes about the (now-closed) official Q Anon Forum on Reddit: Reddit thread about Russian bots pushing the Q Anon hashtag posted:
Same thread posted:A lot of the posters on the cbts subreddit seem to be older (50s and 60s) and very religious. They seem to be new to Reddit and are not technologically savvy and constantly make religious references. Same thread. posted:
quote:It would have to be an alt right supporter that has a ton of free time, programming ability, in depth experience in social media manipulation, and connections to Alex Jones and Infowars. And that's not taking in the possibility that these are trolls, not bots. If those are trolls someone is compensating them, and that takes money. And even then, how much manpower does it take to create 800 bots per day? Is that something a single person can do in their parents basement? I went and found the reference interview with the CBTS mods, the actual interview starts at about 6 minutes 30 seconds in. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RT9H4EA31s4 This just doesn't look like an organic grassroots upwelling of crazy to me, this looks like a very elaborate form of manufactured consent. Interested to hear Uglycat's thoughts on all this.
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Mar 28, 2018 04:40
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Finding more interesting tidbits that seem to indicate that Q Anon is a Russian psyop. Media Matters: Major fake news website YourNewsWire cites "The Storm" conspiracy theory to push fake stories. Media Matters posted:A fake news website that has been classified as a Russian proxy by European Union officials is claiming that a 4chan user who purports to be from the White House was its source for a story. I readily admit that nothing I have presented here is Smoking Gun proof, but I feel there is nonetheless a very strong case to be made that the most likely culprit behind Q Anon is Russia. At the very least Russian psyops certainly seem to be acting like Q Anon one of their own, and Q Anon certainly goes out of his way to promote Russian narratives about pretty much everything.
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Mar 28, 2018 05:27
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Morbus posted:So let me get this straight QAnon is a conspiracy theory regarding a secret political organization that is actually a conspiracy by another secret political organization bravo PJ u cracked the case No, my stance is that Qanon is the product of an active Russian psyop. My hypothesis is that 1.)Q Anon posts the bread crumbs, 2.) false consensus is manufactured on the 'chans and/or communities discussing Qanon, and then 3.) bots are used to signal boost both Q Anon direct material as well as whatever alt-right figures happen to be discussing Q Anon. That's why for example someone who averages 500-6p0 hits on their youtube videos suddenly gets 400,000 hits when they do a half hour rambling diatribe about Qanon. The hits provide incentive to social media figures to keep producing q-anon material because that material reliably provides massive hits and both in subscriber numbers. I am proposing here that Qanon is just one part of Russia's ongoing efforts to radicalize our population and spread both confusion and divisiveness within US politics. They don't need a game plan beyond that because Qanon devotees will inevitably sow the kinds of chaos that Russia is expert at exploiting. For what it's worth I predicted the rise of Trumpism before Trump had even announced his candidacy, and all along I have maintained that Trumpism is a completely natural phenomenon that results from complex emergent behavior. This is pretty much the first time where I am asserting that something like this is not a natural phenomenon, but is instead the result of an intelligent actor directing a natural phenomenon for their own benefit. I don't think it's exactly an outrageous idea either. I pointed to two examples of actors operating this exact same scam (what I call the "Nostradamus Hustle") for direct financial benefit, why is it so outlandish that Russia might have figured out how to do the exact same thing for political gain instead of financial gain? Prester Jane fucked around with this message at 07:57 on Mar 29, 2018 |
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Mar 29, 2018 07:49
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A big flaming stink posted:prester jane have you considered applying occam's razor both to the subject of your postings and your posts themselves? just because you can reason yourself into a gordion's knot doesn't correlate with plausibility I mean I could be wrong, but the majority of the last two hundred or so goons who wrote this exact post to me over the past three years have wound up eating crow... Also Occam's razor doesn't really apply to this case, because it's a choice between an eccentric solitary genius altering our national dialogue by posting gibberish on 8chan, or this is just one more aspect of the cyberwar that Russia is conducting against the United States. I don't see how I Occam's razor can be claimed to cut cleanly in either direction in this case.
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Mar 29, 2018 16:28
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RoboChrist 9000 posted:I normally am one to agree with PJ, but here I kind of agree with the naysayers, sorry, Jane. I just don't think there's really enough compelling evidence for this being a Russian operation or anything. I mean, look at that first infographic in the OP. This nonsense is basically the Book of Revelations for the GOP Death Cult. The Messiah is mustering his forces and preparing for the final battle against the Great Beast and the Antichrist. The Faithful will be kept safe and rewarded in Heaven while the wicked shall be cast down into the Lake of Fire. It's not the fact that the Narrativists following Q Anon have recreated the Grand Narrative that makes me think this is a Russian psyop. A huge theme of my work is that various groups can independently recreate apocalyptic ideas with an identical underlying structure. It's the coordination between q and ions narratives and Russian propaganda narratives, as well as the fact that Russia is clearly using their resources to augment Q Anon's message and spread it as far as they can that leads me to conclude that this is a Russian psyop. It's the coordination that leads me to conclude that this is an actor with an agenda exploiting/directing naturally-occurring craziness. The underlying apocalyptic structure would ultimately be identical whether Q Anon was the result of Russia or not. Contrast this with pizzagate which I think we all agree was a fully naturally occurring bit of Internet craziness. Q Anon in my view is just pizzagate, except this time with an Oracle figure that the Russians control. The point is to give people away to psychologically inhabit their apocalyptic delusions, because doing so will inevitably cause chaos within the United States. You don't need any more of a real plan beyond that if you are Russia in this situation. They would be destabilizing a political rival on the cheap using complex psychological warfare techniques. And again there are clearly individuals who have enough of an underlined understanding of how this all works to run their own private versions of this for profit. That is exactly what the people behind the Bible Code and the Web Bot do, and those are just small operations run by talented Psychopaths you happen to have the right psychological toolkit to pull this kind of scam off. For example there is an Infamous conspiracy form called godlikeproductions. On godlikeproductions all discussion of the Web Bot or anything connected with it is an autoban, because the Web Bot has repeatedly convinced godlikeproductions that the literal end of the world was about to occur. It became such a distraction that the owners of godlikeproductions ultimately had to create an auto pan in order to deal with it, because it was regularly disrupting the board every time the Web Bot managed to convince another group of suckers that "TEOTWAKI" (the end of the world as we know it) was just around the corner. Similarly the Bible Code basically just keeps constantly predicting apocalypses that never pan out, but despite that the scam keeps right on a trucking. All I'm proposing is that Russia figured out how to do this for political gain instead of financial gain, and that they Incorporated this strategy into their products cyber war against the US. Check out this Telegraph article about the web Bot from 2009: London Telegraph posted:
I would argue that article makes it pretty clear that the people behind the Web Bot are exploiting the exact same psychological phenomena as whoever is behind Q Anon. Also worth noting is that the Web Bot guys routinely scrub their all predictions and make it impossible to track them down for yourself, because they are constantly tuning their narrative towards whichever target audience they perceive as being the most likely to give them a financial gain. Which is why current Web Bot predictions look like this: ( he is telling people to buy Bitcoin in order to prayer prayer for the coming apocalypse because bitcoiners are like the ideal target audience for someone running a Nostradamus Hustle for financial gain) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tr1cATWDHk All I'm proposing is that this particular Nostradamus Hustle is being conducted by an actor with a political agenda instead of a financial one. The underlying psychological mechanisms and structure of the apocalyptic ideology that emerges will always be virtually identical whether the person conducting a Nostradamus hustle is doing this for financial gain or otherwise. The underlying psychology will be the same either way. Prester Jane fucked around with this message at 17:06 on Mar 29, 2018 |
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Mar 29, 2018 17:00
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Gum posted:
I very strongly disagree with this. It takes an extremely rare psychological toolkit to be able to pull this off, which is why successful Nostradamus Hustles that last for any appreciable period of time (or accrue a meaningful amount of supporters) are very rare relative to the number of pathological individuals who would happily run one for their own financial benefit if given the opportunity. It really isn't something that any sufficiently motivated individual can pull off.
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Mar 29, 2018 17:04
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The ex-wife of Alex Jones is tweeting out some things that seem relevant to this discussion: https://mobile.twitter.com/AlexJone...agenumber%3D182
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Mar 29, 2018 18:28
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Gum posted:Is there any way to confirm this account's identity? Not so far as yet: https://twitter.com/AlexJones_Ex/status/979203491016183808?s=20 Should be obvious if its really her or not within a week or so I imagine. If it wasn't her I would expect the harassment that the real Kelly Jones will receive from the chuds would force a quick public correction from her/her legal counsel. FWIW what she is describing in those tweets are bog-standard tactics for a clinical narcissist. (During the divorce trial it came out that Alex has a formal diagnosis of Narcissistic Personality Disorder.) If its a fake it is a well thought out one imo. Edit, more interesting tweets from that account: https://twitter.com/AlexJones_Ex/status/979176509721206784?s=20 https://twitter.com/AlexJones_Ex/status/979178801308545024?s=20 https://twitter.com/AlexJones_Ex/status/979318946863214592?s=20 https://twitter.com/AlexJones_Ex/status/979199067510231040?s=20 https://twitter.com/AlexJones_Ex/status/979144030377398272?s=20 Prester Jane fucked around with this message at 18:48 on Mar 29, 2018 |
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Mar 29, 2018 18:42
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A big flaming stink posted:as someone who is shamefully familiar with 4chan posting styles: Fakeposted saga's are a different beast from a Nostradamus Hustle though. There isn't a bunch of elaborate decoding of gibberish involved in a regular fakeposting saga.
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Mar 29, 2018 19:07
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What a totally insane and completely irrational conspiracy I've been proposing here...oh wait: https://mobile.twitter.com/willsomm...r%3D523%23pti13 So the FBI is accusing an Infowars reporter of being s Russian agent and is compelling him to testify in front of a grand jury, and Q Anon is by pure happenstance reacting to this very news! What a bizarre twist. Look guys, the kinds of people who can pull off this kind of manipulation are actually pretty goddamn rare (the comparison of everyone thinking they can be a video game writer is very appropriate here), and they operate in very specific ways. If you know what you're looking for it is0 pretty easy to spot when they are colluding with each other instead of operating independently. Basically all of the posters who have disagreed with me have done so in good faith and some have put forth some pretty good arguments, but collectively you are missing the forest for the trees. You have been focused on how Q Anon could have come about naturally instead of noting the clear collusion between the narratives being put out between Q Anon, Alex Jones, the Russian botnet, and Russian propaganda outlets. It's the uniformity of the narratives they are all pushing that is a dead giveaway. Prester Jane fucked around with this message at 07:32 on Mar 30, 2018 |
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Mar 30, 2018 07:06
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https://twitter.com/willsommer/status/979193624226385926?s=20 edit: I found the Periscope broadcast of Alex Jones and Jeremy Corsi talking about this. Skip to about 2 minutes in for video of a congressional hearing of some sort wherein Infowars is specifically described as an echo chamber for Russian propaganda. Then Alex starts talking, but within the first 30 seconds of talking he straight-up denies that he's ever been to Russia. (Considering that his wife earlier posted a picture of Alex's Russian travel visa, I find that claim to be a little suspect.) https://twitter.com/AlexJones_Ex/status/979107598552240128?s=20 Alex Jones then talks about how major media outfits are calling him up and inquiring about his connections to Russia, whether or not the Russian botnet is being used to spread his websites material, etc etc https://www.pscp.tv/w/1rmGPmbvlQDJN I'm going to go ahead and listen to at least some of this and I'll note any interesting tidbits I come across in later edits to this post. If you are a fan of high-quality schadenfreude that I highly recommend you zip to 7:35 to see a hilariously insecure meltdown that literally starts out with the phrase "If I'm not America nothin is!!!!" I have probably watched on the order of about 1500 hours worth of Alex Jones over the years and I've never once seen him looking this scared. He is on the verge of shiting his pants. This meltdown is a thing of beauty. Prester Jane fucked around with this message at 08:29 on Mar 30, 2018 |
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Mar 30, 2018 07:18
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power word- Jeb! posted:It seems plausible to me that Q-Anon started as a lone troll or true believer and then the Russians took over the persona after they saw how useful it was.
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Mar 30, 2018 08:35
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Luigi's Discount Porn Bin posted:1. Not an "infowars reporter." He's guested on the show a few times. Just spitballing here but despite infowars wanting to seem important, probably more relevant to the Mueller probe is the fact that he was involved in the Trump campaign and was once a frontrunner for an ambassadorship. 1.) My mistake. But you can tell this situation absolutely rattled Alex Jones, and it also got him to lie about going to Russia. I think it was his lies about Russia that prompted his ex-wife to post that photo of his Russian travel visa. 2.) And I also misread what Jeremy Corsi was coming on to talk about and for that I apologize. Cable Guy posted:Video on that site won't link for me... is it this one on YouTube that features uh... Yup, that's the one. Feinne posted:It's definitely harder to do this than just writing insane gibberish, though, because you need to both make insane gibberish but ALSO make that insane gibberish full of fragments that can be broadly interpreted by your followers while also trying your best to encourage them when they think you are right and mitigate any time you went a bit too hard into a prediction and nothing happened that could be interpreted as fulfillment. Exactly. There is actually a great deal more complexity to pulling this off than I think most people are giving it credit for. sheep-dodger posted:I mean, is there a big difference whether Q is naturally occuring craziness or Russian manufactured? It's receiving (probably) Russian signalboosting either way and destabilising America and radicalising the Maga-chuds is its goal either way, so does it really matter in the end which one it is? From my perspective it's a pretty important piece of understanding what's going on with Q Anon. I've never seen a Nostradamus Hustle executed for political reasons before, only financial. I've also never seen a successful Nostradamus Hustle go on this long without the person running things trying to try to draw attention to themselves in some way. Q has maintained his anonymity and his character persona perfectly, which is also something that doesn't tend to happen over this long a period of time with the kinds of individuals who can operate a Nostradamus Hustle. Ultimately the underlying structure of the belief set and the psychological phenomenon at play would be identical whether Q was a naturally occurring phenomenon or not, it's the rapid spread/reach of Q Anon in conjunction with the fact that you and Hans naired his lineup with Russian propaganda Kohl's, as well as the fact is the major players pushing Q Anon are all Russia compromised that makes it pretty clear that Q Anon is part of a Russian psyop in my opinion. Prester Jane fucked around with this message at 14:48 on Mar 30, 2018 |
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Mar 30, 2018 14:27
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This is interesting, seems like our boy here is tied into both Nigel farage and Julian Assange as well as Roger Stone. https://mobile.twitter.com/dcpoll/s...agenumber%3D525 Just LOL at " the FBI seem to know everything about me and my life and warned me that lying to them is a felony". You should probably take their words at face value bub. This guy has a pretty interesting background, some tidbits from his Wikipedia: Wikipedia posted:
Also there is this quote from a video it was part of called "Davos Group Insider Exposes The Globalist Luciferian Agenda": quote:
Prester Jane fucked around with this message at 14:58 on Mar 30, 2018 |
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Mar 30, 2018 14:47
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Dmitri-9 posted:You can't just theorycraft, eventually you have to put up some actual evidence to support your ideas. You just posted a conspiracy theorist "decoding" a Qanon post as proof for a whole bunch of speculation. That means you effectively believe Qanon is real. I jumped the gun a bit yeah, it was late and I was tired and I got over-excited. I fully own up to that. Also I only believe Q Anon is real only insofar as I believe there is an intelligent human being behind Q Anon who has an agenda. And I believe that agenda is being directed by Russia. Edit: Q's most recent comment is just a link to a National Review piece accompanied by the word "truth". The article basically argues the Russia investigation it's all just projection from Democrats trying to cover up Hillary and Obama's Russia collusion. Prester Jane fucked around with this message at 15:18 on Mar 30, 2018 |
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Mar 30, 2018 15:02
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Dr. VooDoo posted:Since one of the corner stones of the Q bullshit is “Muller is secretly working for Trump” I wanna see how Muller raiding Trump’s attorney is going to be spun 
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Apr 10, 2018 00:11
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So way back when I was still in an diagnosed schizophrenic Otherkin (who believed they had a mission from the biblical Enoch to gather together a s group of people to prepare for the ultimate battle between good and evil) I ran an ezboard called "The Gathering Dusk". The fact that the Q Anon subreddits have been named "The Calm Before the Storm" and now "The Great Awakening" is definitely giving me some flashbacks to those days.
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Apr 10, 2018 04:13
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OwlFancier posted:I mean what's the relevance? Back when radki was still a thing a lot of radki adherents claimed to practiced what they called "lentation"- the deliberate triggering of an adrenaline dump (by getting yourself extremely angry by focusing on past traumas) to enhance your DBZ powers. So basically yes. Prester Jane fucked around with this message at 20:23 on Apr 12, 2018 |
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Apr 12, 2018 19:21
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dead comedy forums posted:I got owned by the username char limit, I couldn't get the entirety of it because of two letters Does "dead/gay comedy forum" work?
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May 10, 2018 15:46
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TapTheForwardAssist posted:Lol, apparently Qtips encourage each other to infiltrate The_Donald but not mention Q directly, presumably because even T_D is sane enough to reject the Qcult, which is really, really saying something. A very cool (and real time) example of very high compaction Narrativists using outer narratives to lure (relatively) lower compaction Narrativists to their cause.
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May 21, 2018 04:20
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Relevant Tangent posted:He nuked Kansas. In multiple timelines. He didn't even do it to hurt Superman, he just hated Kansas so goddamn much. I mean, he's not wrong...
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Jun 21, 2018 07:11
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hitchensgoespop posted:The problem with poo poo like this is that you can't "....soon....." forever. Friend, this is just not how these people operate at all. The Seventh-Day Adventists are a literal doomsday cult who's much ballyhooed day of judgement came and went over a hundred fifty years ago and was known as "The Great Dissapointment". Seventh-day Adventists are to this day still preaching that doomsday will come any day now...
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Jun 22, 2018 01:37
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So this is an interesting development:https://mobile.twitter.com/wikileak...r%3D5381%23pti3 Although it's not conclusive, to me this adds a little bit more evidence to the hypothesis that Q Anon is a Russian psyop.
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Jun 26, 2018 14:38
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Zero_Grade posted:Wow, skimming the article titles, this site is....something else Hey remember when I got probated for comparing my experiences in Of heroin cults with what was happening politically in the US? I got probated like, two or three times for that. Clearly I had no idea what I was talking about...
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Jun 26, 2018 18:52
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:It's numerology when a sentence contains a 88 and a "fewer than 13" and then you say "fewer than 13 is 14!" to jam 1488 into it. Or say there is 14 bullet points because if you count them there is 13 and one of them has two topics so that is 14 bullet points. And like as DHS points out even like nancy pelosi has said "we must secure our borders" because it's a super common phrase. There are 14 words in the opening phrase, and then an inexplicable 88 jammed into the end of the document. It is 100% Neo-Nazi signaling. I don't know why it's so completely baffling to you that monsters like to signal to each other, but this is all extremely well documented and easily recognized behavior.
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Jul 2, 2018 16:56
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:It wasn't ICE though, and I know I'm harping on this and looking like a nazi defender but this is exactly how Qanon can be what it is. Now that we know there is secret messages being communicated to us we are free to massage the facts, 13/88 is a stretch and DHS is basically ice so next time we talk about this we will say ICE wrote it and it said 1488, harmlessly simplify it down a little. Then the next time something happens we can reference back to those facts, now unanchored from the original story and start to get our own mythology, then we end up 40 levels deep of mythos that refers to other mythos. You are deliberately misinterpreting the arguments being presented in this thread. No one has gave a single solitary poo poo about the 13 lines in the article, the article opens with a direct reference to the literal 14 words. And then ends with attacked on statistic that is just an excuse to use the number 88. I'm starting to see why you have your reputation of being willfully ignorant.
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Jul 2, 2018 17:15
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"H" is the 8th letter in the alphabet, so "88" is code for "HH" or "Heil Hitler". I took a moment to explain that because OOCC's complete ignorance about the basics of Nazi signifiers hasn't prevented him from lecturing the rest of the thread on how we are all wrong.
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Jul 2, 2018 17:26
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SimonChris posted:88% pass the credible fear screenings. Out of those 88%, 13% go on to get asylum. It's actually "less than 13% go on to get asylum". I bet if they used 100 they would get a whole number, but in order to use 88 they had to round down.
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Jul 2, 2018 17:28
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:I am going to keep harping on how conspiracy stuff goes off the deep end so quickly and the story changes from just being that to containing "also the article contains 13/88 and that is 14/88" to "the article contains 14/88" to "also ICE wrote it!" it's the escalation and mutation of coded secret knowledge that rubs me the wrong way. If combating the rise of incorrect information is such a vital mission for you then why don't you have the first loving clue about Nazi signifiers? Why do you feel that you are able to combat the spread of false information from a position of complete ignorance about the topic matter?
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Jul 2, 2018 17:29
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:The 88 is the actual statistic as reported by other sources. I fully am sure nazis work in ICE and DHS, they are terrible organizations. But I am also 100% sure they do not all conspire to reject 12 out of every 100 people so they can make a cool pepe number spread across like hundreds of immigration offices working intentionally and collectively. Sweet mother of bad-faith arguments Batman!
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Jul 2, 2018 21:36
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:It feels weird how every online crazy community now feels like it is marching towards a violent destiny. Like have you ever looked at the mandela effect stuff? The world's doofiest conspiracy theory that is basically "wasn't berenstain spelled the way you thought it was!??! this is nuts!" is like 50% now tracking down and harassing members of the CERN team because it's somehow been determined they are at fault. (via an anime that had that plot). Someone is definitely going to murder a CERN scientist for stealing the sinbad genie movie from them. Internet conspiracy theories feel like they add a violent edge to even the most harmless conspiracy stuff. I would argue that any online community premised around providing social support for delusional individuals to live in a fantasy bubble inevitably attracts people who are Narrativists. Even if the community starts out fairly innocent innocent and innocuous, the fact that the community supports delusions means that giveen enough time Narrativists will eventually end up seizing control of that community. Once Narrativists control a community they begin conducting compaction cycles- and compaction cycles drive a process of ideological radicalization that always ends in some form of violent authoritarianism. I would argue the same basic pattern plays out in any internet community that's based around enabling/supporting compaction cycles. (e.g. Helldump, Mypostingcareer, Something Srnsitive, kiwifarms etc) no matter how well-intentioned or comedy-focused this communities are conceived as- eventually Narrativists gain control of such communities and begin driving them into toxic radicalization. In my view a similar thing happened with the laissez-faire subforum. It started out by driving out all the obnoxious libertarian posters, and that generally seemed like a good thing at the time. Then there was a period of really awesome posting that allowed us all to ignore the troubling warning signs until it was too late and the community had compacted itself into a toxic nest of left-oriented Narrativists. Prester Jane fucked around with this message at 17:28 on Jul 7, 2018 |
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Jul 7, 2018 17:15
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Teddybear posted:I... I must have missed that little aspect of it. So they just think that someone tried to like Harrison Ford Air Force One out of the sky? And everybody agreed not to talk about it and pretend it didn’t happen, including the US, whoever shot it, whatever country they were over, and whatever intelligence agencies keeping track of it? Sensible. Very sensible. My favorite part is a submarine carrying anti-aircraft missiles.
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Jul 8, 2018 17:07
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