Ask Lemmy

Edit: I did not write this, but I cannot explain it better.

These things always go this way. Society has seen them before and society will see them again. There's always some Doomsday Cult out there predicting the end, predicting upheaval, appealing to the viewer to make them feel special, sell them this idea that they and only they have seen the truth. The end of the world is July 14th, the end of the world was really September 22nd, come along, feel special, feel fear but exhilaration, and while you do, your money will soon be useless so you may as well give it to me!

And when the dates go by and nothing happens, when enough questions go unanswered, when enough predictions are unfulfilled... eventually the shorn sheep return to their pen, their field, and pretend it never happened. It would be too terrible for introspection, too painful to recognize you weren't special, just another rube. Every relationship you threw away was sacrificed in vain, every dollar you threw at the prophet was just his fee for how good you felt. Like a drug. And just like addiction, you don't ever have to come face-to-face with your victims and your failure, your pride doesn't have to take a hit. Ignore the people who hold you accountable, thrust your head in the sand, it was a misunderstanding, maybe the details were wrong, you never really believed it anyway...

And just like a drug, if you never stop to connect the dots, to come to grips with what it did to you and those you love, when the next hit is offered, you take it. Now, this is a new prophet. This time, it's for real. The world will end on May 8th. I always knew in my heart something was coming, I just listened to the wrong prophet... Got the year wrong. Got the cause wrong. This time it's for real. I want to be special. I've seen the secret truth. The message is for real this time! Last time it was just a test...

The internet amplifies these people, makes them brave, but they've always been there if you knew where to look. It's a fundamental flaw in our species. I don't know if it will ever go away.

It was always a russian influence operation. That effort is probably spent on another operation atm.

They do seem to be quieter after Russia got isolated as a result of their war.

Or maybe it happened after the Jan6 arrests and convictions.

Hard to tell an exact date

I still can't believe anyone fell for that, it was literally a joke on 4chan. Literally some random people on 4chan thought it would be funny and started making up the most unbelievable shit and people thought it was real. If you don't believe me just look up some of the conspiracy theories and tell me they didn't start as a joke made up by /pol/tards.

Alot of these conservative “movements” come and go pretty quickly, seemingly overnight, as soon as they’ve fulfilled whatever use they had. They’ll pop up to rant & rave and grab headlines for whatever idiotic/heartless/cruel thing. Then, after a few waves of outrage and meme counter-attacks, when the spotlight is starting to fade, it’s like whatever group originally funded them pulls the plug and they just sort of disappear.

Most of what they were talking about had something to do with the Trump presidency. That is long over by now, it has now become clear to everyone that Biden isn't going to be replaced by Trump except through an election.

They became absorbed by the republican party who tempered the insanity (though still clearly insane) so that they could keep some semblance of normalcy to retain followers.

It's still going although it's morphed quite a bit. Check out https://reddit.com/r/qanoncasualties to see the effects.

https://www.qanonanonymous.com/

Here's a dope podcast that follows Q related stuff critically. The back catalog is good to go through, too.

The Q stuff I used to follow (for fun) has morphed and most of the shows have devolved back to the original grift or angle.

https://nemosnewsnetwork.com/ <-This guy is full anti-Semite now.

https://toresays.com/tore-says-show/ <-This lady is full on pathological. I listen for the mental illness.

https://x22report.com/ You can find various q weirdos (or whatever they've become) here.

Praying medic and neon revolt are still out there.

They’re still out there. People seem to think there needs to be a centralized platform or symbol for them to exist. Most of us, I’d guess, are ex-Reddit or have frequented enough social media platforms for us to have curated our feed to limit the noise, limiting comms to those we follow or friends. Or at least I have. That excludes the insanity that is the open-to-the-public postings of every stripe ever. Nextdoor. Facebook. The comments section on popular news sites. Heck, even here where we defederate stuff like hexbear. The comments immediately degrade into fear, hate, paranoia, racism, lib-bashing, conspiracy theories, JAQing off, and everything else we’ve seen before.

Just because we don’t hear the Q noise doesn’t mean they’re disappearing. They may not cling to the “Q” part, but they haven’t changed. They just make up new memes, but it’s the same old hateful insanity. They very much still exist.

Since my comment was removed, I'll just state objective facts: there was never any evidence to support the conspiracy posted by this 4Chan commentor. The hysteria around it eventually died out.