During my normal dredge through conspiracy theory social media, I stumbled on this tweet from a diehard QAnon believer detailing all of the people she claims to have told about the anonymous conspiracy avatar.
Assuming this is true (and it’s Twitter, so you never really know), I can only imagine all of the blank stares that greeted this person as she ambushed random strangers with her enthusiasm for Donald Trump’s supposed plan to purge America’s enemies in a spasm of extra-judicial violence.
For a conspiracy theory that’s been marked by a litany of failed predictions, disappointments, de-platforming, and infighting between factions; QAnon remains remarkably popular.
This is the theory that Trump is about to unleash a massive wave of indictments against the deep state, and anonymous Trump administration official known only as Q is leaking foreknowledge of events to acolytes on far right social media.
And despite the endless exhortations that the great purge of America’s enemies is coming “next week” or “soon,” none of these arrests or events have materialized.
Every prediction Q has made has either failed completely or only been right because it’s so vague that it could be applied to anything – a cold reading tactic called “shotgunning.”
Yet QAnon has now been going for over a year, and inexplicably seems to get more popular every time it gets some mainstream attention.
I want to answer a question that I’m asked over and over again: are there any conspiracy theories that turned out to be true?
That is, are there any popularly held beliefs that a group of powerful people secretly worked together to do something harmful, that were later proven with compelling evidence to be real?
It’s a given in the conspiracy theory community that history, particularly recent history, is full of conspiracy theories that were proven right or came true.
The death of former president George H.W. Bush on Friday marked the first passing of a POTUS in the social media age.
It also marked the first death of a president in the age of the instant internet conspiracy – a place where the secret misdeeds of the powerful aren’t whispered about in free pamphlets and public access TV shows, but by millions of people with instant access to each others’ lamebrained opinions.
Mike Rothschild 
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