I've been following Qanon since week one of r/CBTS_stream. Right after it left 4chan while the other attempts at it like FBIanon stayed. They had these Thursday night prayer threads where they'd offer prayers for and to Trump. The second I saw those, I knew it was the conspiracy. The way it engaged them, isolating lonely boomers on Discord and then making it seem like posting something they saw on facebook was research, was unique to it apart from gangstalking. Gangstalking had the limitation of requiring schizophrenia to find it attractive. Qanon just required you to be a reactionary of some kind hoping for a Millerite salvation. Unlike selective conspiracies such as UFOs where the UAP people try to distinguish themselves from the ancient aliens goobers, Qanon replicated the Fox News dynamic where they tune into the 24/7 hyper-real content stream and every contribution to it is equally valid. Making that contribution meant you could be the scooby doo sleuth that finally took down the most comically evil thing ever.
It's essentially the Snow Crash neurovirus for boomer brains instead of programmer ones. The moment I saw it, I knew it was the most dangerous thing I could watch.
Gangstalking had the limitation of requiring schizophrenia to find it attractive.
You'd be surprised how susceptible the mind is to Simple Tricks and confirmation biases. As comforting as it is to say, you don't need to have a mental illness to start buying into these more batshit conspiracy theories. You just have to find community there when all others shun you.
Gangstalking isn't just a batshit conspiracy theory. It's each person's schizophrenic delusions being confirmed by the group under the guise that everyone is the same basic category of targeted individual. There isn't even a theory beyond that, just everyone's individual theories being brought to the potluck where you are obligated to confirm everyone else's. From the outside looking in on /r/gangstalking or the youtube channels for it, it's uniquely nonsensical.
unless you feel specifically targetted by a shadowy institution that has total control. ya know, the kinda ideology Alex Jones has been directly peddling to his viewers for the past 30 years.
the line between ideology and mental illness is so much blurrier than neurotypicals like to admit
I don't remember where I read it but supposedly there are records of delusions similar to gang stalking recorded at least back in to the 1800s, with people who believed that they and everyone around them were being controlled by some vast ill-defined machine.
Huh, sounds like an area ripe for research. Gang stalking as a manifestation of capitalist alienation that sprung into being within the overlap of schizophrenia and the destruction of tightnit communal bonds that previously existed.
I remember that person. Real sad stuff, because obviously there's nothing a random person on the internet can do or say to help them. I hope they broke through it and got help from someone who does have that ability.
We're pretty crazy if you ask like 80% of the American working class.
We routinely go in to deep rabbit holes of speculation about how far the CIA's grip extends. We're constantly talking about government, police, business, and intelligence agency conspiracies. I can see how someone with delusions of persecution might think this is a friendly place, at least for a little while.
Thank you, I need to be reminded that I am meat every once in a while.
This goes back way before 4chan, to the late 70s, when a guy in California named Art Bell started a radio program called "West Coast AM". West Coast AM aired wacky conspiracy theories in the wee hours of the morning on AM radio throughout California and the rest of the west coast. In 1989 the show would be syndicated internationally and quickly become the most popular overnight radio program in North America. So now you have a bunch of isolated and alienated truck drivers, insomniacs and various other not playing with a full deck folks all hopped up on pseudoscience, ahistory, and the most outlandish conspiracy theories you could cook up. Shortly thereafter the worldwide web comes about and now they can start communicating with each other on various forums, YouTube, various social media platforms, etc.
If I had a time machine the first thing I'd do wouldn't be to go back and minecraft Reagan, or Thatcher or any other proto-neoliberal ghoul. I'd go back to 1978 and plant one squarely between the eyes of Art fucking Bell. That's the man most responsible for the misdirection of working people's correct and good fury towards absolute nonsense like Qanon.
Wasn't Art Bell mostly harmless? I didn't live on the West Coast when he was around but I remembered excerpts from his show that made the rounds during early Youtube. A lot of it seemed to revolve around aliens, cryptids, "sounds of hell," and other things like that.
I do remember Rush Limbaugh being huge in the 90's on the East Coast and isolating people by telling them that "they" were your enemies and hated you.
He was definitely not harmless. Whether his intentions were just to entertain and make money, or something more nefarious, all that "reptilians are responsible for the new world order" stuff definitely was the embryonic brain worms for the batshit stuff we see today.
I disagree, all this stuff was already in the water (especially with the UFO and cryptid crazes of the 70's and 80's) so to speak, all Art Bell did was get a place on the radio and just let people talk, arguably for one of the first times. That said, all those places on the internet would exist with or without Art Bell, it's just that Art Bell somehow managed to see the future and get ahead of the curve for talk radio.
Yep, I used to listen to it in the 90s on my Walkman during long ass overnight bus rides back to campus from basketball games. It was on all the AM stations, which was all that came in besides country music, riding around rural Ohio, Michigan, Indiana and Illinois
It's not from there, shit goes way further back. America's current conspiracy worldview is basically the Protocols of the Elders of Zion from like 1900, with an added apocalypse fetish thanks to christian fundies.
I'll say I haven't listened to Art Bell enough to really judge him, and what I have heard was the cryptid/UFO stuff you described. But I mean, whether he specifically did or didn't, I'd still say treating thinly-veiled nazis with the same triviality as Bigfoot dipshits is a bad idea.
Fuckin hell at least go further back and shoot Father Coughlin instead
Holy shit you just reminded me of when r/kotakuinaction claimed that the Christchurch shooter was "just joking" about hating Muslims in his manifesto
The Lanis family dog was also shot multiple times and killed.
No word on if it was the police or the fash
This is really fucking bleak though
The sister that was at her friend house said it was her dad that shot the dog
Maybe he was a good boy and tried to defend the family from the monster his master turned into
“I’m shocked and I don’t even know what to say,” Rebecca wrote. “Fuck you, Qanon. I hope the FBI tightens its grip on you and that your lackies rot in prison (and hell) for poisoning so many people.”
:wonder-who-thats-for:
Rebecca is the 21 year old daughter who says she avoided being killed because she was spending the night at a friend's house.
stating the obvious, but: imagine believing any of this and thinking that the most efficacious way to bring about TRUMP would be by murdering your family, the only people who care about you, and to whom you have a duty of love and protection. instead of, like, going to the fed building w/ a nail gun, or icing a PM with a modded nerf pistol, or whatever.
dude was a real jerk.
That would require them believing they aren't living in the best country on earth and everyone else lives in straw huts with dung floors
I've honestly never understood why there is so little violence against police, the judiciary, and other public officials in the US. Everyone hates the government, everyone has guns, but there are very few direct attacks on government officials.
The only people who really want it is us and sovereign citizens, and we at least know better than to do it while solo and unpopular.
