Tag: qanon

When The Metaphorical Snake Oil Becomes Real

Mike Rothschild4 Comments

What happens when a conspiracy theory suffers so many disconfirmations and failures that no reasonable person could still believe in its efficacy? Do its followers walk away? Do the gurus who have spent years monetizing it realize the error of their ways and renounce their work?

No, they believe harder and grift bigger. That’s why many of the biggest names in QAnon have turned from cranking out books and t-shirts to shilling for a supposed “miracle cure” called MMS. Hey, it literally stands for “miracle mineral solution,” so it must actually perform miracles, right?

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CherAnon: How QAnon Believers Co-Opted a Leftist Icon For About a Day

Mike Rothschild

One word. That’s all it took for the QAnon movement, desperate for something massive to break through the endless cycle of hope and disappointment, to latch on to entertainment icon and *flaming* liberal Cher as their latest and greatest hope.

And given the word, it’s no wonder.

In the classic (ie, before the internet) sense, the word “anon” simply means “soon” or “shortly.” But in the internet shitposting sense, it means anyone who wants to keep their identity anonymous. QAnon followers are often called “anons” and before Q came on the scene, there was a host of other “secret government insiders” dishing out “inside info” going by code names like “FBI Anon” and “WH Insider Anon.”

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Brain Worms All the Way Down

Mike Rothschild10 Comments

Did you know that James Comey left a cryptic message in his tweet jumping on the “five jobs I had” trend? And that message detailed the location, date, and subject of the deep state’s next false flag attack?

You didn’t hear that? Well it’s obviously because the “MSM” didn’t want you to hear it. But if you knew what to look for, if you had the special knowledge it takes to decode what [these people] are *really* saying in their tweets…well…it would be obvious.

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With or Without Q

Mike Rothschild2 Comments

Can a cult survive without its leader? What happens when an evolving religion gets no new scriptures?

These are the questions to ponder as the QAnon conspiracy theory evolves into what appears to be a new phase: less an ongoing puzzle to solve or a story constantly being added to, and more of a general philosophy based on the study of codified works.

Since a frenzy of posts in late March, including a long string of posts attacking a private citizen, an orgy of shout-outs to followers at the Trump rally in Grand Rapids, and a few general thoughts on the media; QAnon has been nearly silent.

From March 30th to April 22nd, Q has made just six posts. And they feel perfunctory, not as if the Q poster is trying to add new layers to the mythology, but instead, to keep followers from walking away. They ape Q’s trademark combination of rhetorical nonsense and circular riddles, but only in the service of rehashing old stuff.

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No, Angela Merkel is Not Hitler’s Daughter

Mike Rothschild

Is German Chancellor Angela Merkel actually the daughter of Adolf Hitler?

On the surface, it sounds like the kind of ridiculous conspiracy theorizing that gives the internet a bad name. Hitler had no known children, and Merkel was born a decade after Der Fuhrer put a bullet in his face. And while the Nazis have been speculated to have developed all sorts of fantastical technologies, from moon bases to anti-gravity bells to time travel, none of those things are anything but the domain of pulp science fiction and “Fourth Reich” conspiracy theories.

And yet, the idea that Merkel could have been spawned from the seed of history’s greatest monster is surprisingly (or not) popular in the darker corners of the internet.

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