QAnon Supporters Await JFK Jr. in Dealey Plaza

[Joe in PNG]

I'm wondering how many of these people are live action role players pretending to be Qanon believers.

Someone needs to hijack the twitter account of some high level celebrity who the Qanon people would be obsessed with and post this message: "All QAnon supporters: mandatory meeting outside of FBI headquarters in Washington. Please retweet."

The movie that I'm hoping they make is Harold and Kumar join Qanon.

Half the people are trolls trying to see what nonsense the suckers will buy.
Half the rest are trolls egging on the first half to see what nonsense the idiots will post.
And then there's those who aren't in on the joke.

[Chance]

I have been tempted to dismiss this zany QAnon stuff as one, gigantic trolling campaign, but the handful of encounters I've had with those folks have taught me that many are dead serious.

[jetfire]

I'm wondering how many of these people are live action role players pretending to be Qanon believers.

Very few if any

[TGS]

One of the more useless and absolutely frustrating activities is trying to argue with a conspiracy theorist.

Let me point you to one of our larger threads in the politics sub-forum.....

[blues]

This crap is seriously depressing.

[BobLoblaw]

I think much of the QAnon phenomenon is due to the lie machine that major media has become. The QAnon propagators (a.k.a. trolls) think that if MSM can outright lie, why can't I? The regurgitators are trying the fill the void of what used to be considered journalism and attempt to monetize (financially or socially) their own truther channels. Then you have the poor true believers who suck at the internet and their distrust of the media has caused them to believe everyone except MSM and the more pushback from MSM, the more they see QAnon as being truthful. After all, are you going to listen to known deception artists or these seemingly average Joe's?

I have family members who have bought into some of this. Trust in their aging true believer friends is what caused most of the issues.

[MK11]

I think much of the QAnon phenomenon is due to the lie machine that major media has become. The QAnon propagators (a.k.a. trolls) think that if MSM can outright lie, why can't I? The regurgitators are trying the fill the void of what used to be considered journalism and attempt to monetize (financially or socially) their own truther channels. Then you have the poor true believers who suck at the internet and their distrust of the media has caused them to believe everyone except MSM and the more pushback from MSM, the more they see QAnon as being truthful. After all, are you going to listen to known deception artists or these seemingly average Joe's?

I have family members who have bought into some of this. Trust in their aging true believer friends is what caused most of the issues.

It's a pretty far leap from thinking mainstream media lies to embracing the idea that a Kennedy is coming back from the dead to usher in a new era of Trump.

Or maybe it's not such a leap. Maybe it's a teensy step for the type of person who would buy into that.

[Moylan]

The thing is that lefties buy into stunningly idiotic and horrifically corrosive conspiracy theories like CRT because those theories tickle their fancies and because they have never been taught the fundamentals of how to think clearly and dispassionately, nor have they ever learned anything substantive about the past.

But righties go to the same schools as lefties. So...... you know, QAnon or whatever. It's not like it's dumber or eviler than CRT. Just tickles different fancies.

[hiro]

Honestly, I was shocked and didn’t know (and still don’t) how to politely tell her she’d lost her mind. Plus, she lets my dog live with her when my family goes on vacation, so selfishly I also can’t bring myself to sabotage that arrangement!

You know she's brain washing your dog, don't you?




(I'm only half joking)

[Hieronymous]

I think much of the QAnon phenomenon is due to the lie machine that major media has become. The QAnon propagators (a.k.a. trolls) think that if MSM can outright lie, why can't I? The regurgitators are trying the fill the void of what used to be considered journalism and attempt to monetize (financially or socially) their own truther channels. Then you have the poor true believers who suck at the internet and their distrust of the media has caused them to believe everyone except MSM and the more pushback from MSM, the more they see QAnon as being truthful. After all, are you going to listen to known deception artists or these seemingly average Joe's?

I have family members who have bought into some of this. Trust in their aging true believer friends is what caused most of the issues.

I agree this is likely a significant factor, on both sides. As noted, Liberals get further pushed to the left as MSM is for them largely an echo chamber comprised of journalists who are ideologically not representative of mainstream democrats, so when you listen to Rachel Maddow or Joy Reid, you end up falling into lockstep with stuff you might in other times have rejected.

So it is for conservatives, for years most have been aware(RIP Rush) that MSM is either overtly lying about stuff, or regularly committing for lack of a better term, "Journalistic Sins of Omissions" by failing to report on stories which in some way detract from their ideological world view, be it the Biden Laptop story, or many factually true, but positive stories about Republican administrations. So we migrated to Fox, Newsmax, Breitbart ( not saying these are necessarily bad), then maybe we were exposed to Gateway Pundit, or Alex Jones, and then to sources such as QAnon, etc. where any semblance of balance is extirpated.

Because evidently the economics of this suggests being all in for one world view is more profitable (after all, outrage = clicks, equals add revenue), I have no idea how we will ever benefit form a network or news source that can actually claim to be providing that necessary yin/yang tension that we need for honest reporting.