“The Storm is coming,” say the conspiracy theorizers whose grotesque imaginings
terrified the country to attention this week. Maybe they’re right.
QAnon adherents
encourage those seeking the truth to “follow the White Rabbit,” but it’s hard to hop down this hole without getting totally lost in their horrorland. The simplest description of the plot line goes something like this: President Trump isn’t under investigation; he is only pretending to be, as part of a countercoup to restore power to the people after more than a century of governmental control by a globalist cabal. Also, there are pedophiles.
A figure named “Q,” who supposedly possesses Q-level security clearance,
disperses “crumbs” that “bakers” bring together to create a “dough” of synthesized information. (This is not how baking works, but that seems the least of our worries.) Because Q is the 17th letter in the alphabet and 17 is also a number Trump has said a few times, among other clearly-not-coincidences, he is the real deal, not an Internet troll engaged in an elaborate example of live-action role-play.
It’s obvious that this is scary, but it’s less obvious exactly why. To start, the sheer scope of the supposed conspiracy should cause alarm. By combining the tales tinfoil-hatters have told over time, these truthers have packaged everything attractive about this type of propaganda in one tantalizing product. And that means more and more people will buy what they’re selling.
Then there’s QAnon’s path to prominence — from 4chan to 8chan to more mainstream sites such as YouTube and Twitter and, finally, to a
Florida Trump rally and television screens across the nation. In the cesspools where the theory first flourished, registration is either not required or not possible, and the “
rules,” such as they are, look nothing like the terms of service for a site like Facebook. The intelligentsia is already at odds over how the more-established entities should regulate themselves, or be regulated. It’s even harder to have that conversation about a site like 4chan or 8chan that eschews responsibility for its content entirely.
Now that it’s clear that what starts on the fringe doesn’t stay there, it is a real concern.
