“What is history but a fable agreed upon?” This famous quote is a bit of a microcosm for its own sentiment. Trying to determine its origin will lead one to Napoleon Bonaparte, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Voltaire, or even Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle. There is a certain distinct irony in a quote meant to express a conspiratorial skepticism about the nature of our shared reality having its own sordid and convoluted origin story. This is a feature most conspiracy theories share, and the various theories of the somewhat nebulous QAnon, which led thousands of Americans to the White House lawn on January 6, 2021, are no different.
Conspiracy has its place in the American ethos. The United States is, after all, a nation founded on revolution, resultant of a mistrust of and liberation from, its former binding institutions. There is an undeniable Uncle Walt-style hyper-individuality baked into the “American way”. Even western philosophy, traced all the way back to Socrates, nurtures a skepticism of the powerful and the questioning of authority. Thinkers like Theodor W. Adorno and not long after, Richard Hofstadter would further examine this phenomenon in exploration of an archetype of American paranoia. Kathryn S. Olmstead would follow these ideas through the better part of the last fifty years of American history, tracing popular conspiracy theories, their origins, merits, and fallacies in her book Real Enemies. Her work, importantly, shows these theories in practice.
A common thread in the beginning stages of these ideologies is ideation of corruption in one’s institutions. As mentioned previously, Americans tend to harbor a larger than normal distrust in their institutions, which was no different in Hofstadter, Adorno, and Co.’s time. In modern times, this distrust has only been heightened by a more visible version of corporatocratic corruption. With that heightened paranoia, QAnon, from the depths of internet imageboard obscurity, filled a vacuum in ways that were both unlikely and unconventional. This rise is something that journalist Will Sommer has reported on in considerable depth, providing context for the series of events that led many casual indulgers of conspiracy to a cult-like fever pitch. The context of these events is paramount to understanding the nature of the conspiratorial mind and how, even with good intention, a lack of context dooms the movement’s own believers to ridicule. Following Sommer’s work to the present, the fallout and persistence of online conspiracies can be examined as a new form of the American “paranoid style”. I would argue that the catalyst for this new style is the convergence of two major factors: a post-Citizens United corporatocracy version of moneyed politics which vastly increased a sentiment of corruption and helplessness among the populace, and the proliferation of those sentiments via an emergent social media landscape designed to specifically amplify and promote paranoia. The corrosion in trust for our institutions is in direct conversation with our dormant skepticism and we, now more than ever, are in direct conversation with one another by way of an economized group of platforms which prove insufficient for nuanced debate. The result of this collision is a “new American paranoid style” that is more potent and prolific.
I. The Paranoid Style
But to examine Q-anon’s role in conspiratorial propagation, it is important to define what we mean by “conspiracy”. There is a relatively accepted notion of what it means, but the recent rise in academic interest in the phenomenon has led to an interdisciplinary approach to study. An epistemological approach might define conspiracy theories as a form of “stigmatized knowledge” (Barkun, 2016). A focus on the content of conspiracy theories will lead to patterns resulting in an attempt at using alternative explanations—usually involving the powerful acting in secret—to bring about some change for society. (Usinski, 2018). And still, others focus their research firmly on the factors that produce spikes in conspiratorial theorizing, such as economic hardship and societal crisis (van Proojien and Douglas, 2017). All can be simultaneously true.
This typified style of thinking is no new fodder for scholarly American discourse. It’s a strain of thought that was certainly alive and well when Theodor W. Adorno was formulating ideas of “paranoia in pseudo-conservatism” in the foundational The Authoritarian Personality (Adorno, 1950). The fundamental idea behind this notion is that the conservative ideology is one built on preservation, and that preservation is built on the foundation of a system that has been beneficial for the conservative. Therefore, they must observe a level of paranoia and skepticism regarding a system that allows for upward mobility of destabilizing oppositional groups. Anyone else’s gain is their loss, and the mechanism which enables that loss is therefore antagonistic when not working in direct benefit. Not long after, Richard Hofstadter would build upon these ideas of the “paranoid style” in his widely celebrated collected essays (Hofstadter, 1964), in examination of the particular thought patterns persistent in American ethos. Interestingly, even the mere identification and labeling of this paranoid style, in today’s world, has its own troubled history.
For one, Hofstadter’s essays read much like a playbook for prominent peddlers of conspiracy rhetoric, down to the “quality of pedantry” or “heroic strivings for evidence” described within. One could either attribute this to either the accuracy or the influence of his work. Notable essayist Thomas Frank bemoans a popularization of a “pseudo psychological approach to politics” in the wake of Hofstadter’s publications. Others, still, criticize Hofstadter for his relegation of this paranoid style, which breeds conspiracy, to the political fringe. This examination may be most pertinent, because Hofstadter, having died in 1970, surely could not have foreseen such a formidable proliferation of what he deemed fringe on a scale in which we see today. A combination of online interconnectedness, anonymity, and distinct lack of moderation would be necessary to unlock the dormant paranoia of most.
II. The Chans
To understand how this movement started, it’s imperative to understand the origin of “the Chans”, and a bit about internet culture at large. The most online group of people during the genesis of these websites happened to be those most adept at the internet during its infancy; in other words, they may not have been the coolest folks on the planet. A Japanese imageboard site, “Futaba Channel” (2chan.net), gained traction with this certain brand of western audience–mostly young males–from their familiarity with the forums of the website, Something Awful. 2channel was essentially a place where people shared anime, Adobe flash content, or bantered about video games. It was what Something Awful was to the west, but organized by category and utilizing an imageboard design (meaning only that you had to upload an image with each post). At its core, it symbolized something of a secret internet society: the necessary component of any good conspiracy.
In 2003, a 15-year-old New Yorker named Christopher Poole (internet handle, “moot”), copied the open source code of Japan’s 2channel, used an online translator to translate the language, and launched 4chan. What 4chan offered users was the same format of its parent site, but with English as the primary language and with much less of the aggrieved moderating 2chan was known for. And this, it might be said, is where the trouble truly began.
At this point, an entire internet subculture had sprung up around these few sites. There was a language, often coded as purposefully offensive, that only those from the beginning or those dedicated to belonging could comprehend: these legacy users were known as “Goons” or “Oldfags”. Meme culture was born from these boards. What few realize is that discourse on these few sites directly affected culture at large in profound ways moving forward as the internet became more and more contextualized and available to the average person. Much of the culture or language is unnecessary to understand in its relation to QAnon, but some verbiage is essential: terms like Anon, Copypasta, Bamboozle, Green Text, Shitposting and Trolling factor into placing QAnon into context.
A green text would be a short story format that included green colored text and a small picture, often a meme of some kind. Stylistically, it would often be written in broken sentences and shorthand–future signatures of Q’s style. Often they would start with the line, “be me…” and then launch into a short narrative. They could be true or fictional or somewhere in-between, but what was always true was that they were designed to be shocking, depressing or trollish. The anonymity of the website is what made this sort of story so compelling to its users. Everyone who had an account on the site was simply referred to as Anonymous–yes, this is where the “Anon” in QAnon comes from, and it is also where the more militant group of hackers, ANONYMOUS, derived their name and, indeed, often congregated.
The anonymous nature of the platform allowed users to tell a story in a new way. Often, people would take green texts and remix them, giving them a different ending. The site had no retention of data, so anything that persisted was perpetuated by the users. This is the reason meme culture exists in the way that it does, and why this method of storytelling was popular in the subs of 4chan. It was and is, in a way, a free market of relevance. Green texts would sometimes end with what’s called Copypasta, which is a type of Bamboozle. Copypasta (copy and paste) is a snippet of short-form copy that gets reposted over and over again. A Bamboozle is a type of switcheroo—you start telling what the reader feels is a novel story, building to some climax, and then end it with a classic Copypasta for that “gotcha” moment. It is, essentially, a text based prank. This sort of content now exists all over the place, far beyond the reaches of just 4chan. In some ways, this is actually the most important part of this entire document. It is important to have some context for what is to come, but I can assure this is going somewhere. Please do not let this extensive clarification distract you from the fact that in 1998, The Undertaker threw Mankind off Hell In A Cell, and plummeted 16 feet through an announcer’s table.
The last bit of that paragraph? An example of a fairly common Bamboozle utilizing one of the more popular Copypastas of the earlier days of 4chan. Early users of the site became fairly adept at drawing others in and building drama with short-form text. This became a skill crucial to the creation and staying power of Q.
With Christopher Poole and 4chan taking the limiters off as far as moderation was concerned, the site saw traffic of a more extreme variety. Poole and the site were soon under constant duress and scrutiny as communities began to form that promoted bigotry, racism, violence, and distribution of child pornography. There is no shortage of examples of 4chan user’s exploits in popular culture, including ANONYMOUS’ attacks on corporate media, Poole’s being voted TIME magazine’s 2008 most influential person through users’ manipulation of an open online vote, various celebrities’ leaked iPhone nude photos, and Gamergate. Poole, himself, even began coordinating with the FBI to trace and convict traffickers of child pornography with information from the site. To say 4Chan was becoming a haven of nefarious intent would be an understatement. “Neo-nazi groups found receptive audiences in the involuntarily celibate, or ‘incels’, who raged against women for not having sex with them, and the garden variety conspiracy theorists who had been drawn by 4chan’s reputation as the internet’s Wild West” (Sommer, 2023). The formation of an insidious base of the angry or the outcast was forming and finding a sounding board for their grievances in one another.
Still, as 4chan’s controversies continued to grow, it was business-as-usual in the subs. Two subs in particular, created the environment that would spawn what was to one day become QAnon: /pol/ for politics (its posters referred to as /pol/tards) and /b/ for random (you guessed it, /b/tards). Green Texts within gave way to Shitposting and LARPing. The small-format fiction stories became more about the reaction than the story itself. One would “Live Action Role Play” as another figure entirely and post from their perspective in order to get the community talking. The more riled the comments, the more successful the post. That’s the hallmark of a shitpost. Assuredly, a quick trip to Twitter or the YouTube comments section reflects that it is a concept still very prevalent today.
Sommer, seen as one of the foremost contemporary experts on the rise of QAnon, cites one specific post in /pol/ in October 2017 as the birthplace of the movement:
Hillary Clinton will be arrested between 7:45 AM - 8:30 AM EST on Monday - the morning on Oct 30, 2017.
The user followed this post up with claims that the Trump Administration was coordinating with American allies to prevent Clinton from fleeing. “For QAnon believers, those two posts from the figure who would become known as ‘Q’ mark the start of their sacred text, the first of the ‘Q drops’ that reveal the true state of the world” (Sommer, 2023). What Sommer doesn’t mention is the mountain of failed LARPers before Q became a style. Many of the oldest “goons” insist on Q’s origins as a reference to John de Lancie’s character, Q, in Star Trek: The Next Generation who would speak to Captain Picard in strange and disjointed riddles, usually giving Picard some method to expand his mind by asking questions (almost a dog whistle phrase at this point to those of a conspiratorial mind) in order to solve some humanitarian crisis. The version of this character that caught on most successfully boasted that their name came from their “Q-level clearance”. This successful LARPer boasted “intimate knowledge of the Clinton Case” and was cited by someone linking their LARP as the FBI source behind the Pizzagate theories. “This fiction makes its way to Twitter as nonfiction and someone walks into Comet PingPong with an AR-15 radicalized by this ‘inside information’” (Sommer, 2023). These posts were commonplace in /pol/ as well as /b/ and were typically ridiculed as pathetic shitposts, but the ramifications of these types of LARPs leaking outside of their incubator were starting to become evident, and the leak was soon to become a deluge.
With the influx of an unsavory population within 4chan, and the rise of Donald Trump’s national profile, the landscape began to shift. Trump represented something of a dream candidate for a community rife with sexism, racism and bigotry, sure, but for the rest of the population within 4chan, he represented something more compelling: he was the ultimate troll. He was also a fountain of ambiguous language coupled with unyielding confidence. In both trolling and conspiratorial terms, he was the gift that kept on giving. Because of his popularity among the site, he quickly became the focus of “Q” posts, with one particular user–whose legitimacy could only be confirmed through 4chan’s tripcode system–proving to be the most adept at producing compelling content. It would be this figure, whose above post garnered so much attention, that would perpetuate the LARP with the perfect anti-establishment anti-hero in place to promote rhetoric of already popular /b/ theories: Donald J. Trump.
Christopher Poole eventually stepped down from 4chan, citing the headache of moderating the site. It was sold to an original 2chan administrator and still persists (though, now split into two sites) today. Before this could happen though, many of the more extreme factions that grew angry over Poole’s over-moderation (ironic, considering his motivation for starting the site in the first place) moved to 8-chan. While “moot” would work with the FBI to help track down pedophiles and terrorists, “Hotwheels”, 8Chan’s founder, relocated the site to the Philippines (age of consent is 12, mind you) where he struggled to keep the site running. He eventually found a partner in a man named Manila who ran a pig farm and a pornography site designed to get around Japanese pornography laws. After three shootings (Christchurch, Poway, and El Paso) in 2019 where the shooters posted their manifesto to 8chan, Hotwheels finally admitted the site got away from them. After a brief shutdown, Manila and his son started it back up and rebranded it as 8kun after finding a Russian hosting provider who was willing to host the content. It is now a safe harbor for literally the worst of humanity, and you don’t have to take my word for it. Even Hotwheels himself now advocates for shutting the site down, but the pig farmer and his son have run away with it.
The figure (or likely, figures) known as Q would hop around “The Chans”, but landed primarily on 8Chan, where they found the most support and engagement. Whether the interest was ironic or sincere, the figure posting had succeeded in cementing a cult following. Their following was about to prosthelytize to a wider audience, one aided by the proliferation of social media. And if the above history seems to be a bit much to take in, if it seems too silly to take seriously, remember that what it represents is the context lost to entire generations of people who were about to come into contact with its most tested and successful arbiter’s messaging.
III. Social Unrest and Media Literacy
The election of Donald Trump to the Presidency in 2016 sent shockwaves through the media landscape. Social media came under heavy scrutiny for the part that it played in “platforming” disinformation–for how little oversight the major companies, namely Facebook, provided. There was a generally accepted notion within the Chans’ communities that whatever circulated well on the imageboards would make its way to Reddit (itself, a more moderated and organized version of the Chans, complete with data retention), and what did well on Reddit would trickle its way to more normal channels of social media: Facebook, Instagram, eventually TikTok. Another generally accepted notion was that Facebook was for Boomers, with droves of younger users ignoring the social media platform and heading for cooler pastures…specifically, the other app owned by the exact same company.
Facebook being for boomers is certainly borne out in the data, though it shows that the site is home to a large number of GenXers as well. Users between the ages of 18-24 only make up around 18% of Facebook’s accounts. The rest are older. And therein lies a major problem. The context and history of the Chans, meme culture, shitposting, trolling, all of it: these staples of internet culture belong to the young. These younger generations have a semblance of savvy for online information, for discerning a troll.
No generation is prepared for unmoderated content, however, even if stemming from some nebulous belief in its sanctity–never mind that it’s never truly existed. Theories touted by 15-year-old Christopher Poole, his dissenters, those running the Chans to this day and self-proclaimed “free speech absolutists'' like Elon Musk hinge on the existence of some utopian state of speech that can remain untouched, never co-opted by bad actors, without any form of carefully determined level of moderation. One only has as far as the state of the Chans today and the aftermath of QAnon’s rise for evidence to the contrary of the existence of such a state of speech. Taking the limiters off invites the bad actors in, and when the bad actors are the engine for the machine that trickles trends down to the folks with no context, well, that’s how you get that one Uncle who has been disinvited from Thanksgiving.
Social media companies soon came under fire for the underlying code of their algorithms and how user interaction fed into user experience. The now-famous Zuckerberg panels underscored two “kernels of truth” that fed into the paranoia of the American people: that “social media companies has psychologically predatory methods for exploiting attention as a commodity, and that the current elected government was completely inept in moderating, let alone understanding, the nuance of the problem” (Conway, Maura, et al., 2019). Not that this information assuaged skeptics, but the part about how algorithms were exploitative certainly provided context for a generation realizing they had been radicalized. Before these trials, however, the damage for many had already been done and in a lasting way. A subreddit known as r/QCasualties–a forum which acts as a support group for people who have “lost” family members to the QAnon cult–saw a massive uptick in traffic long before Zuckerberg attempted to explain the internet to a geriatric electorate.
The questions that the panel were unable to conceive, however, were being conceived and asked by scores of tech-savvy journalists. Examination of how these structures are incentivized began to spring from these conversations. In an economy that is predicated on advertisement and persuasion (and these are the only methods for monetizing social media), inflammatory content will win the day. It is an unfortunate truth that emotional triggers which stimulate people’s attention and engagement for the longest amount of time are those of fear, anger, and paranoia. The economic and societal incentives are at odds. As Jaron Lanier states:
If anything, platforms are punished for their efforts to self-regulate…This is because the metrics that investors have used since Facebook’s IPO to value the platforms — such as daily active users, clicks, and so forth — are suppressed by platforms attempting to regulate activity. Indeed, fake accounts and their content are engineered to drive attention, clicks, and responses in a way that also benefits the platform. This typically results in the kind of engagement Wall Street views as “healthy” activity. Bizarrely, regulation is currently structured to motivate companies to promote this pattern, not remove it. (Lanier, Weyl, 2018).
Without this context, the general public was (and to a large extent, still is) an unknowing, often unwilling, participant in a competitive economic war for their attention. And while that may seem like the premise of marketing and advertising since its advent, “this new landscape has the wrinkle of being widely distributed, hardly understood, yet promoting instant interconnectedness” (Singh, 2022). That interconnectedness promotes the formation of subsects of media spheres where entire communities are algorithmically incentivized toward their own confirmation biases. Once again, through the economic need of these subsects to garner more clicks and views, they often resort back to the same fear, anger, paranoia loop as their hosting platform to keepo themselves economically viable.
What this often leads to is the formation of a pattern within the minds of these communities. And in the case of a new internet landscape, one that is reaffirmed and, indeed, reinforced. The conspiracist communities often “press their analysis beyond the realms of facts and logic and in doing so inject toxins into the public discourse” (Olmstead, 2019). The “leap from the undeniable to the unbelievable” of Hofstadter lore in these channels becomes a self-perpetuating self-delusion. In a world of infinite information, one can construct almost any case one wants in order to reinforce biases. This would prove an infinite resource to those who would co-opt QAnon’s rising star, and exploit the paranoid patterns of its burgeoning base.
IV. A Symbiotic Relationship
As Q gained notoriety for their riddle-like drops, a whole subcommittee began to shape themselves around the figure. The gamesmanship had its own appeal and the added benefit of adding a layer of spy movie-like codebreaking. The Q drops began to be known as “breadcrumbs”, as in something one would follow to the truth. This helped in Q’s sustainability as the figure could remain more cryptic. Now, the deciphering was in the hands of the “Bakers”, those legacy followers who showed an extra level of dedication in taking the breadcrumbs of Q and contextualizing them for the masses, to usher others into the fold before “the storm”. The storm, of course, referring to a moment that had by this point built up a mythos from an offhand comment of Trump’s, in which he would eradicate corruption from the deep state. As one might conclude given this information, the culture had begun to take on a life of its own, complete with its own codes, myths, pledges, catchphrases, and importantly, merch.
The collision and overlap with more populous social media sites, especially those with an audience of the less internet savvy (namely, Facebook), saw QAnon reaching a fever pitch. More bakers were cropping up all over and it was only a matter of time before political opportunists got involved. At some point, a movement with this much traction transitions the attention of Trump strategists from winks and nods to outright acknowledgement and endorsing of QAnon beliefs. The irony is that to the average Baker the thought that a campaign staffer could simply scrub through recent Q chatter and inform the campaign on what sort of messaging should be most prominent for appeal, simply never crossed their minds. What it appeared to be was more important: validation. “For a group doing so much digging for clues, no one thought to consider that they were the conspiracy theory” (Sommer, 2023). And as the chatter got louder and louder and eventually ended up storming the Capital, it became clear that the mechanisms which the media landscape existed in was, to say the least, dysfunctional. The two ends now, conspiratorial and political, fed one another nearly simultaneously. As one developed an idea or uttered a phrase, the other was quick to co-opt and hold up as proof of concept.
V. Moderation and Money
Measures have been taken since to moderate disinformation. Fact-checkers and other implementations including staff dedicated to content moderation have become commonplace on major social media sites, while some others are hyper-focused on gutting them, namely the newly-acquired Twitter. Elon Musk claims to be a free speech absolutist in his repeal of moderation, considering the site to be the world’s Town Hall (which is itself a poor analogy as Town Halls are heavily moderated events). What is at the heart of the dichotomy of the two methods is that moderation is a band-aid for the larger structural problem that Jaron Lanier has alluded to: that the only monetary incentive for these company’s existence is advertising dollars, and that the metric through which advertisers assess these companies viability is through the attention they garner. Musk wants to take the limiters off for the exact reason that Facebook had to at least pretend to put them back on. He needs to monetize, and fast. There’s only one pathway to bringing that around in the current system. Negativity be damned. Painting it as a free speech issue is just a way to make it appealing.
But if history is any indicator–and many people have strong inclinations that it is–then 2-chan to 4-chan to 8-chan to 8-kun and beyond, places all built and rebuilt on the insistence that needs of free speech were not being met, are ample warning signs of where cynical co-opting of first amendment virtue-signaling can lead. Each iteration only proved to be more and more of a cesspool. The very minute influence, even, of some of its more innocuous material proved to be a corrosive force on society at large. Moderated speech on a singular platform is in no way an infringement of free speech, especially if handled democratically by way of a moderation community responding to the needs of its user base. The very idea of signaling a need for a bastion of free speech speaks to Hofstadter and Adorno’s paranoid style in the American psyche. It is the tried and true rehashing of the idea that the moderation is a wholesale threat to speech in general, that in some way it is a testing ground for the removal of future rights. As the history of the Chans has shown, the paranoid style seems to have merit.
Where Hofstadter’s paranoid style runs into a wall, however, is in corruption of the modern day, in which I specifically refer to as a post-Citizens United political landscape. The now-famous Supreme Court ruling, through a series of workarounds in the new language post-ruling, enabled the creation of super PACs (ironically not considered politcal action committees and regulated under separate rules), in which unions and corporations were empowered to raise unlimited funds toward influencing election campaigns. While these organizations cannot contribute directly to a campaign, the decision enabled them to meet with campaign organizers and discuss strategy. Super PACs also differ from PACs under their separate regulatory standards as they are exempt from requirements to immediately report funding sources. This fact speaks to the allure and influence this method of influence has had on campaign finance since the controversial decision and subsequently created the phenonmenon that is referred to in modern politics as “Dark Money”. This shadowy corporate personhood creates a somewhat legally legitimized corruption whose influences everyday people can see at work. Whether or not they can contextualize it is unimportant. The QAnon movement is proof enough of that. The underlying notion is what matters: the idea that the will of the people has not been exacted, but instead confronted by the will of moneyed interest. The notion that the Supreme Court, a powerful institution of our democracy, enabled this disadvantageous ecosystem for the common citizen only exacerbates that unrest. When one force feels insurmountable, the other inevitably takes the blame. And so, the moneyed interests of corporations takes the backseat to the institution that introduced it into the electoral system.
These interests, which everyday Americans can recognize in issues such as gun control (an issue with overwhelming public support) and its relation to the NRA as a force of moneyed interest, create a naked and identifiable corruption. As Daniel Weiner writes in a report for the Brennan Center For Justice, “This is perhaps the most troubling result of Citizens United: in a time of historic wealth inequality, the decision has helped reinforce the growing sense that our democracy primarily serves the interests of the wealthy few, and that democratic participation for the vast majority of citizens is of relatively little value.” The paranoid style often relies on a more shadowy villain–like that of the satanic cabal of child-pornographer deep state democrats of QAnon lore–to drive home its root paranoia. When corruption takes place in the daylight, however, conspiracy theorists don’t have to work as hard. This type of corruption gives them something to point to. A failing in one aspect of a democratic institution–and optics is certainly one aspect–has ripple effects across the entire system:
When one or several aspects of a democratic regime weakens or enters a crisis, corruption can spread within and infest the remaining components. For example, when institutional checks decrease while the discretion of politicians and the influence of powerful individuals is high, corruption extends. Thus we can say that a crisis of democracy or of its components and corruption reinforce each other. (Drapalova, 2019).
Democracies have shown the most resilience to such corruption when compared to other governments. This is due, in part, to horizontal accountability on some level and frequency of elections. As the most obvious and public form of tangible corruption in the perception of the people, some meaningful pushback on the rights and ability of corporations to influence public office is one step that can remove some public perception of corruption in institutions. The paranoid style of mind, otherwise, requires very little kindling to ignite itself into the next movement, whether it truly knows why it is doing it or not.
