Friend Infected With Right Wing Brain Worms - What to Do?

The article that DJI linked yesterday is long, but goes into pretty good detail about what qanon is and how it functions.

That subreddit is full of really harrowing posts—people descending into obsession, alienating their wives, their kids. It seems like people are desperate to lose themselves in a fantasy world.

wait so basically thousands of people believed shitposts on 4chan?

yes but hundreds of thousands of mostly old people

3 years ago??? What's happened to time?

it was erased by Bill Gates iirc

Is it really not known who is behind this?

Harry Styles was behind the last ~mysterious~ online thing I looked into...

I don’t think my man is behind this one

I heard it was the founder of 8chan. Whoever is driving these “breadcrumbs” is evil, as is Alex Jones. It’s destroying lives.

Are they still doing it? Can anyone join in or does 'the community' only believe a/some specific accounts?

I think the original Q is still posting through a verified account on 8chan. And there is a broader network of pages and videos and things around it.

That Medium article is great, thanks DJI!

You're welcome. It's crazy how even just looking at the collages of people making innocent hand signs (in an essay about Apophenia!) made something in my head go "is this really a coincidence?"

yes but hundreds of thousands of mostly old people

I know that we've come to think of it this way but I fear it's not true, there are dummies every age all over this

Why is society producing so many people who are willing to throw their lives away for a fantasy? And not even an appealing one?

I said my take on a conspiracy theory thread: alienation and feelings of powerlessness and paranoia (experts, govt, trad media can't be trusted) brought on by living in an incredibly complex modern world

Why is society producing so many people who are willing to throw their lives away for a fantasy? And not even an appealing one?

Ever heard of religion?

Why is society producing so many people who are willing to throw their lives away for a fantasy?

I think you are misdiagnosing the source of the problem; it's not so much that these people were raised wrong or mis-educated by society. Far more of the blame lies with the people who understand exactly what they are promulgating and the means by which they are doing it, through constant lies and emotional manipulation, preying on the weaknesses that reside in all of us. They are amoral lizards, actuated only by the desire for power, money and control. They laugh at their dupes as much as we sometimes do, then continue to destroy the world for their own petty gain. Blame them, not their handy fools.

so you blame the lizard people?

People like alex jones are certainly predators, exploiters, but they seem to have many willing “marks.” It does seem like people are adrift from their local communities and workplaces and too plugged into national and global issues, which are overwhelming, and looking for personal meaning there — that seems to be a part of it.

Also maybe a lack of interest in being an ordinary, hardworking and ethical person. In the US, that isn’t valued enough. People thirst for glamor and following Q breadcrumbs seems to give that to them.

I think the original Q is still posting through a verified account on 8chan. And there is a broader network of pages and videos and things around it.

― treeship., Tuesday, January 12, 2021 10:39 AM (forty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

a guy bought 8chan from its founder, he is a sexpat pornographer who lives in southeast asia, it is believed that he is Q (although he may not have been the original Q)

Makes sense that Q would be a pedophile

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Watkins_(businessman)

this is him

There is usually a lot of projection involved in paranoia

Ever heard of religion?

Even the dumbest religion is more appealing than this shit tbh.

And most religions have a lot to offer people psychologically. Their appeal isn’t inconceivable the way this is.

The fascist base aren’t dupes! A shared framework of lies—even or especially outrageous, obviously untrue lies—provides them with a base upon which to build political power. Their goals are objectively immoral and indefensible from every factual perspective, but inhabiting the same shared fantasy world let’s them pursue those ends anyway. It is, like others pointed out, exactly the same function, politically, that religion has traditionally served: a way to conjure power “out of thin air”

“Lets” ducking autocorrect

Idk man

I think there are dupes involved here. On that reddit people talk about family members terrified that the cabal is after them

And maybe some people in Salem really believed in witches, but the uppity loud-mouthed womenfolk got conveniently burned all the same.

This is even more appealing than established, venerated religions. This makes you feel like you're in a secret decoder ring special club, you have access to this knowledge that has been purposely and thoroughly hidden from you. You are one of the select few who have seen The Truth.

This is def working in some people’s interests Dan I agree. But it’s also poisoning a lot of minds.

I think it’s appealing in a very childish way. They are forsaking the responsibility to be a real person in the real world with real commitments, beliefs. They’re throwing their mind in the trash, which isn’t what you do if you become a Christian, Buddhist or Jew. Those creeds — the good versions etc — are all about how to have meaning in your everyday life.

Treesh, brainworm “beliefs” arise from motivated doublethink. These people exhibit all the signs of genuine belief, but if someone like Trump or Fox News tells them otherwise they will instantly and seamlessly “believe” the opposite. It is the weaponized bad faith of fascism turned inwards. It really is not belief in the same way that a reasonable person believes in a fact.

The other mainstream religions I missed should be in there too. There’s redeeming features along with the drawbacks that we’re all aware of too

these ppl would have all been better with the actual religion their parents had, at least in the small churches that one thrived in (geographic) communities and as a sort of extrareligious, civic responsibilty

This makes you feel like you're in a secret decoder ring special club, you have access to this knowledge that has been purposely and thoroughly hidden from you. You are one of the select few who have seen The Truth.

So basically Dan Brown's to blame.

they are clearly desperate for meaning

And Rhonda Byrne, as I've been saying for years.

xp

DJI posted this to uspol and I found it to be an interesting counterpoint (thread):

Let me explain something to those of you who didn't grow up around violently abusive white supremacists.

*They absolutely do not believe their own bullshit*, but it's useful for them to pretend they do.

— Lili Saintcrow (@lilithsaintcrow) January 7, 2021

This is the best explanation i've seen of why it might be happening, where it came from, etc. Unsurprisingly the top comments are full of people who came back to watch it again after last week.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTfhYyTuT44

I said my take on a conspiracy theory thread: alienation and feelings of powerlessness and paranoia (experts, govt, trad media can't be trusted) brought on by living in an incredibly complex modern world

I don't think its anything to do with the modern world (unless we mean going back to the enlightenment). I think of it as more a reaction to education, an antipathy to measuring things, a disdain for city folks, to things learned in books and not from hands

This isn't anything recent

(I think this applies more to brainworms more so than consipratorial thinking. Though there's overlap I don't think they are the same)

things learned in books and not from hands

Not necessarily. Plenty of conspiracy theorists are very well read (perhaps less so in the US, however).

Yes, agree, that is true, brainworms and conspiracists aren't the same thing, but they overlap in certain ways

i think the main appeal of Q is as coping mechanism, to prevent disillusionment, when the trump presidency didnt actually result in a complete overthrow of the existing society and the reign of justice on earth which people were hoping for. we know all the damage that trump has done to the "others" (undocumented immigrants most notably), but that's not enough for a lot of his supporters. essentially america is the same country it was in 2016: he didn't reopen the factories and coal mines, he didn't stop immigration or revert america to a whiter past, popular culture has if anything gotten more liberal and more geared towards representation, BLM protests increased in size and intensity, the hated liberal elites are still thriving, obama and clinton making money hand over fist on media deals, democrats winning elections, etc.. basically every grievance that existed before trump was elected still exists and for some people pretending that actually secretly trump is waging sacred warfare on the the satanic forces of darkness suits them more than reality.

Yup

But why did they put their faith in a celebrity grotesque to transform the nation?

Because they want to be him? idk