The Trump Insurrection of Jan. 6 was not the much-anticipated QAnon “Storm.” Neither did the Qpocalypse happen on Wednesday. Donald Trump left town, left his cult in the lurch, and Q-drops prophesying that Joe Biden would never take office were a bust. There was no eleventh-hour deus ex machina. What’s an internet cultist to do?
Eric Lutz reminds Vanity Fair readers how another busted end-times prophesy played out.
Harold Camping predicted the Rapture would occur on May 21, 2011. The faithful prepared. One true believer put his life savings into posters in New York subways warning the end was coming. It didn’t:
“I think I was part of a cult,” one regretful former follower of the late Camping said, a year after the world didn’t end.
Now it is QAnon’s turn.
“I’m about to puke,” one QAnon devotee posted online as these events unfolded, according to the Daily Beast. “I feel stupid,” wrote another.
Some of the faithful will engage in what I call the “well-uh, well-uhs” to explain why the magic did not work as promised. Others who did not throw up threw in the towel:
Some, rather than accept that fact, tried to spin new theories to explain why the Storm hadn’t come. Maybe it was all part of Trump’s plan. Maybe Biden was even “part of the plan,” as some suggested, according to the Washington Post. But others appeared to resign themselves to the fact that what they’d believed would never happen. “Wake up,” one Q follower wrote in a chatroom, according to the Times. “We’ve been had.” Ron Watkins, a prominent figure in the QAnon movement who has been rumored to be Q himself, more or less seemed to acknowledge as much on Wednesday, suggesting that others in the community “go back to our lives as best as we are able,” and “remember all the friends and happy memories” they’d made.
At least we’ll have Washington is Watkins’s upbeat message for those who don’t face prison.
The Washington Post offers in its postmortem:
Graham Brookie, director of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, which tracks misinformation, said QAnon followers are making increasingly illogical leaps as they struggle to make sense of developments.
“It’s something that has long been true of conspiracy theories: When they don’t come to fruition, they shift their delusions to the next thing,” he said. He noted how some comments posted below Trump’s farewell video suggested that “it wasn’t quite time for the Great Awakening, but it’s coming soon and this is how.”
One aspect that has not received as much ink is that QAnon has an international following, one that may not evaporate with the Trump presidency. Germany and Japan have “particularly strong and growing” QAnon followings.
Researchers also speculate that QAnon’s militarized core may yet prove a real threat.
“History has taught us far-right movements don’t cool off during a Democratic administration,” researcher Travis View tells the Post. “The people who stick with it are going to become even more radicalized and potentially more dangerous.”
One more Trump legacy Joe Biden does not need on his plate, and one more thing for you to worry about when finally you get to eat out again at your neighborhood pizzeria.
Don’t sit with your back to the door.