This story in the New York Times about a QAnon true believer shows that this is not really a political problem. It’s a societal and cultural problem that’s exploded through the internet. It’s a form of mass hysteria and it’s very creepy.
Every morning, Valerie Gilbert, a Harvard-educated writer and actress, wakes up in her Upper East Side apartment; feeds her dog, Milo, and her cats, Marlena and Celeste; brews a cup of coffee; and sits down at her oval dining room table.
Then, she opens her laptop and begins fighting the global cabal.
Ms. Gilbert, 57, is a believer in QAnon, the pro-Trump conspiracy theory. Like all QAnon faithful, she is convinced that the world is run by a Satanic group of pedophiles that includes top Democrats and Hollywood elites, and that President Trump has spent years leading a top-secret mission to bring these evildoers to justice.
She unspools this web of falsehoods on her Facebook page, where she posts dozens of times a day, often sharing links from right-wing sites like Breitbart and The Epoch Times or QAnon memes she has pulled off Twitter. On a recent day, her feed included a rant against Covid-19 lockdowns, a grainy meme accusing Congress of “high treason,” a post calling Lady Gaga a Satanist and a claim that “covfefe,” a typo that Mr. Trump accidentally tweeted three years ago, was a coded intelligence message.
“I’m the meme queen,” Ms. Gilbert told me. “I won’t produce them, but I share a mean meme, and I’m kind of raw.”
These are confusing times for followers of QAnon, a deranged conspiracy theory birthed in the bowels of the internet. They were told that Mr. Trump would be re-elected in a landslide, and that a coming “storm” would expose the global pedophile ring and bring its leaders to justice.
But there have been no mass arrests, and Mr. Trump is leaving office on Wednesday under the cloud of a second impeachment. Many prominent QAnon followers have been arrested for their roles in this month’s deadly mob riot at the U.S. Capitol. They are being barred by the thousands from major social networks for spreading misinformation about voter fraud, and law enforcement agencies are treating the movement as a domestic extremist threat.
These setbacks have left QAnon believers like Ms. Gilbert hoping for a last-minute miracle. Her current theory is that Mr. Trump will not actually leave office on Wednesday, but will instead declare martial law, declassify damning information about the “deep state” and arrest thousands of cabal members, including President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Like any movement its size — which is almost certainly in the millions, though it is impossible to quantify — QAnon contains a wide range of beliefs and tactics. Some “anons” are veteran conspiracists who have spent years exploring the theory’s many tributaries. Others are newer converts who have only a vague idea how it all connects. There are law-abiding keyboard warriors as well as violent, unhinged radicals.
There is no question that QAnon, which began in 2017 with a series of anonymous posts on the 4chan online message board by “Q,” a person purporting to be a high-ranking government insider, has outgrown its roots on the far-right fringes. It is now a big-tent conspiracy theory community that includes left-wing yoga moms, anti-lockdown libertarians and “Stop the Steal” Trumpists. QAnon believers are young and old, male and female, educated and not. Every community in America has its fair share of them — dentists and firefighters and real estate agents who disappeared down a social media rabbit hole one day and never came back.
She gets kudos for being “the meme queen.” Not that she makes them. She’s known for sharing them. She’s obviously very proud of that. Which is just sad.
This dynamic reminds me of catfishing romances or people who get addicted to online porn — or maybe gambling addiction. And it seems like something most of us first witnessed a long time ago, in the early days of the internet. It’s a combination of delusional belief in something too good to be true and the dopamine rush of getting positive reinforcement at the push of a button. It does something to the brain. From everything I’ve read about this, for people who are isolated or take that solitary dive down the rabbit hole when they are alone, I guess it can be intoxicating. And it’s got to be devastating when the money runs out, the porn becomes exhausting or your true love is revealed to be a hoaxster. I guess some people just move on to another conspiracy or find some way to rationalize their way into a different obsession, but I think that for many, reality does bite in the end and they will be in a very fragile state. They give up their lives for this illusion and when it’s gone there’s nothing left.