This Politico story about the terrible toll QAnon is taking on families around the country is harrowing. I feel so sorry for anyone caught up in this lunacy. It’s bound to make you feel crazy yourself. I urge you to read the whole thing if you have time.
Here’s some info that I found interesting about why certain people get caught up in this:
On January 10, Steven Hassan, a mental health professional and cult expert who wrote a book called The Cult of Trump, held a Q&A session on five Reddit groups including r/QAnonCasualties in which he talked about mind control and how one might try to de-radicalize a Qultist.
The Q and A accumulated more than 240 comments. Kelseycloud talked about their sister and how frustrating it had been to watch her become a QAnon believer. “She is now on that sinking boat of fear and anxiety, and is back to being incapable of withholding information,” Kelseycloud wrote. “I do my best to maintain a more centrist/neutral position… but it’s hard to see her suffer.”
“How well do you know the QAnon arguments/ ideology?” responded Hassan. He recommended everyone in Kelseycloud’s situation to familiarize themselves with the conspiracy and document beliefs of their Anons and how they change over time.
“When she or he sees you really ‘get it’ but do not believe it, you are in a position to explain why you do not accept the claims/ prophecies,” Hassan wrote. “BUT always take the position that if they can convince you that that ideology is true, you will adopt it too.”
Richard, 77, doesn’t remember when or how exactly he found his way to r/QanonCasualties. He was worried about his brother Mark, 73, and wanted to know if other people were going through the same thing as he was. (For privacy reasons, these are not their real names.) Richard emailed me after he saw my post on the forum asking for people to share their experiences. His outlook today is grim: He has given up on getting his brother back.
The brothers have always disagreed on politics, but in recent months every exchange they had turned into a vicious fight. “I live on planet Earth and you live on planet Q,” Richard emailed Mark in October. “I don’t know if we can ever have a civil or intelligent conversation again.”
“You have treated me as a stupid little brother all your life, and I looked up to you as a mentor,” Mark wrote in one of the emails. In another, he wrote, “You have joined the sheep.”
The way Richard describes his brother, Mark fits the profile of what psychologists call an “injustice collector,” a personality type considered likely to fall for conspiratorial thinking. Injustice collectors are overly confident, impulsive and eager to expose the naivete of people around them…
Anger shows up time and again on r/QanonCasualties. So does interest in secrets. Some humans are more drawn to conspiratorial thinking than others, says Dr. Joseph Pierre, a professor of psychiatry at UCLA who writes extensivelyabout QAnon on his “Psyche Unseen” blog on Psychology Today. Those who have a high level of mistrust of authoritative sources of information are more susceptible, for example. So are those who crave uniqueness and certainty, closure and control.
And Covid-19 is an added factor. “Times of crisis such as the current pandemic tend to increase belief in conspiracy theories as a way of coping with fear, uncertainty, and lack of control and as an expression of mistrust in authoritative sources of information,” said Pierre. People who don’t trust institutions, feel anxious over their future and have more time to spend online due to the stay-home order, may find that conspiracy theories can fill the void and soothe them. Once sucked into the dark sands of QAnon, they can develop an addiction-like compulsive behavior as they indulge in hours of “research.”
“When people go ‘down the rabbit hole’ and cut themselves off from previous relationships in favor of a new online community, they can be seen as ‘becoming a different person,’” said Pierre.
I think the compulsion thing is real. For some people the rabbit hole becomes like video poker, giving that dopamine rush everytime they hit enter. It can be porn or gambling or conspiracy theories — and the algorithms know exactly how to target it. I’ve gone down music rabbit holes that ate up many hours of my time before I realized it.
It appears that these bizarre conspiracy theories appeal to certain personality types that are primed to hear it. I suppose that’s not a new thing but the technology that brings people together to reinforce this disturbing alternate reality is. It’s chilling.
And, by the way, when you have powerful people egging this stuff on, I’m sure it makes it even more alluring:
QAnon boards apparently went nuts when they saw that McEnany tweet.