I’m a little fuzzy on some of the details, but as far as I understand it, the QAnon conspiracy theory alleges that Donald Trump is secretly at war with a global ring of satanic pedophiles, and some shadowy agent codenamed Q is posting anonymous updates on the new developments. There is about as much solid evidence to support this idea as there is to support the claim that the Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax. Which is to say, there is no evidence. While this absurd theory has gotten a lot of media attention, a far more pernicious conspiracy theory than QAnon is tearing our country apart.
As is usually the case with these things, those advancing conspiracy theories tend to think that the existence of a certain fact is itself sufficient proof for the whole cinematic storyline they have concocted to explain it. Sandy Hook truthers point out that certain web pages — memorial sites, news articles, etc — were timestamped for before the attack occurred. This, along with a couple of other random data points, some true and some not, is supposed to be all the evidence needed that 20 dead children never actually existed, or were paid actors. A more logical explanation, of course, and one that doesn’t require a whole frantic succession of additional unproven assertions, is that timestamps on the internet are sometimes wrong, and there’s nothing terribly unusual or bizarre about that. In the case of QAnon, proponents can point to the existence of global sex traffickers like Jeffrey Esptein, and this somehow is supposed to strongly indicate that all of the other claims made by some random guy posting on 4chan are reliable. This is how conspiracy theories work. They feed on our credulity and our very human tendency to make sense of the world by drawing false connections, assuming motivations, and imagining, hoping, that reality is as decipherable and organized as it seems in Hollywood films.
.png)
.png)
