I’ve written at length about how, despite its followers claiming that it’s merely a non-violent research movement, QAnon is a blood-soaked conspiracy theory based on the extra-judicial purge and execution of tens of thousands of perceived enemies of the state.

But QAnon is also a movement of people who think they know something horrible that nobody else knows. And that while trying to “redpill” or “wake up” the “normies” in their midst, they carry the burden of that secret knowledge with them alone. Naturally, being a receptacle for such horror makes them sad. Very sad. Like, anhedonic, unable to experience pleasure, sad.

One of the top threads for the week on the Q-endorsed research board on Voat asks Q bakers “When you became awake, did everything feel fake to you? Movies, shows, games, media, pop culture, society, economy, government, Hollywood, relationships, friendships everything?”

And it is full of responses from people who did indeed feel that everything had become fake to them. From simple entertainment like movies and music, to interactions with the people closest to them, QAnon is utterly full of people who have gained knowledge of a (non-existent) plan by Donald Trump to demolish (non-existent) pedophile rings infesting every level of media and government – but lost pretty much everything that makes them human.

Warning: almost every thread on Voat eventually (or quickly) devolves to a shocking level of anti-Semitsm, racism, or both. But if you can more or less ignore the horrors and focus on the trauma behind them, the thread is an eye-opening glimpse at just how bleak belief in conspiracy theories has made these people’s lives.

The most upvoted (ie, agreed with) comment: someone who literally can’t enjoy movies, music, or “normal conversations” anymore. But hey, he/she is happy. Right!?!

This Voat-er appears to have been written off as a crank by their wife, and feels alone with everyone in the world except Voat, naturally (and gets scolded for using non-woke search engine Google, for his trouble.)

Another poster who has become so calloused to the suffering of actual children (rather than the non-existent children being trafficked by Hillary, etc) that his mother sees him as heartless.

This person loves the band Tool, but has decided he must stop listening to them because…hey, maybe they’re CIA funded?

When you’re so woke that you can’t even buy groceries without freezing up.

And you don’t even want to know what many QAnon believers think of sports. Predominately black athletes working for a number of Jewish team owners? Yeah, it’s bad.

On and on the misery goes. People who can’t enjoy music anymore (thanks to the Jews, of course) to friendships lost to people who claim with a decent amount of credibility that the only love they have left is their dog.

Some folks have been in the shit for far longer than Q has been around, with some claiming to have been ensconced in the misery for years, or even decades, thanks to 9/11 conspiracy videos like “Loose Change.” And the many conspiracy books that laid the ground for that movement.

And it’s not as if this thread is the only one where people express the dark cloud of loneliness and depression that’s settled over their lives since Q came along. The Daily Beast and Vice both chronicled Facebook posts by Q followers who have isolated themselves from family members rather than spend the holidays with people who aren’t woke. Who among us could forget the “QAnon Thanksgiving Sandwich?”

And Esquire wrote about QAnon breaking up families, ending relationships, and pitting children and parents against each other when one believes and the other doesn’t.

Yes, it’s easy to mock these people, and I’ve done it myself. It’s also easy to write off their profound lack of joy as a self-inflicted wound created by their belief in a racist, anti-Semitic conspiracy theory whose ideal ending is a giant pile of corpses. If this is what you choose to believe, then maybe you deserve to be miserable.

But the bigger issue here is the sacrifice these people believe they’ve made in service of Q. They’ve lost friends and family, jobs and hobbies, spent their time and money, all to advance a plan that they believe will save the world – but in reality, is a complex grift that got out of hand.

There are real questions to be asked here.

What happens when the “plan” that they’ve devoted themselves to fizzles out for good? Are they really going to go back to their brainwashing TV and Jew-infested music and normie friends? How will they react when it becomes clear that their sacrifices have been in vain? Can these people find their way back to the life that the rest of us already lead? Will be they be accepted if they try? Or will they just twist themselves into tighter knots and declare that the only reason it failed is because they didn’t give enough of themselves to it?

When you no longer enjoy anything other than a conspiracy theory, what do you fill the hole with when the conspiracy theory crumbles?

I suspect we don’t have long to find out. In the meantime, I hope the people dealing with the profound sadness seen in this and other QAnon threads get some help. Or at the very least, a hug from someone they still care about.