this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2025
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[–] [email protected] 56 points 3 days ago (6 children)

Are we going to find out the history of q-anon?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago

Not really. QAnon was only on 4Chan for the first year, then it migrated to 8Chan. But the tl;dr is it was probably started as a joke, taken over by bad-faith trolls, and has been under the control of Ron Watkins and his creepy son for a significant amount of time. QAnon Anonymous (now named QAA) is a great Podcast that's been tracking the Q movement and other right-wing extremists for years.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 days ago

I hope so. Textual analysis suggests a "2 Q" theory where the earliest posts were mostly one author on 4chan (interestingly not all, several early drops are believed to be from different users) and then another person (who I believe wholeheartedly is 8chan administration Ron Watkins) started posting as Q and moved to 8chan. I'm interested in knowing who the earliest Q was and what the content of the very first Q drops was, given that there are believed to be several that didn't get archived. Several people have claimed to be 4chan Q but none of their stories are particularly convincing. My guess is that it was a bunch of random trolls at first and then one of them just went with it when they started getting a following.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 days ago (3 children)

A person in my discord (with no source, so keep that in mind) sent the attached. He was theorizing that Q-anon was a Mossad operation based on this chart saying Israel has the highest quantity of posts after 2014. He's fairly left leaning, and not one of the crazies on 4 chan yelling "the joos!" Having said that I have no idea if this chart is even legit.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I have also seen this image but the question is what did they try to accomplish? If anything cesspools like 4chan have radicalized guys to the far right and increase antisemitism.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 days ago

There's this weird phenomenon where Zionism and antisemitism have a ton of overlap on the far right. White Christian nationalism has end times beliefs that rely on Israel existing as a nation in full control of the entire original "Holy Land," but such beliefs don't necessarily require the Jewish people to be thriving or treated as equals.

I guess it's possible that Israeli intelligence and leadership behind such an operation, if there is any legitimacy to the idea this was a Mossad operation, could've decided that the odd hate crime carried out against Jews by ~~mentally ill lone wolves~~ stochastic terrorists would not only be a comparatively small price to pay in the furtherance of their goals, but even serve to galvanise the broader populace in support of Israel. And that outcome is actually what we're seeing in reality - we see that a large number of moderates and even some progressives have hopped on board the "any criticism of Israel is antisemitism" train.

I'm not saying I believe this theory, but it definitely seems plausible.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Lots of swedes are radicalised, just imagine a country of under ten millions being seventh place.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It could be a relatively small number of users all making a disproportionally large number of posts. Like a single Minecraft streamer with too much time on his hands.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

One swede, but really angry 😁

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Sweden is also a really popular place for vpn hosts tho so they might not all actually be from sweden

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago

Fair point!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

Australia only has 28m people and in 5th place

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Why's it only white dominated countries?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It’s an English language forum.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Ayy you dense noggin, Belgium Greece Sweden are English countries? Not to mention Russia and Israel

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

No. Qanon stuff mostly happened on 8chan, and even then there's no secret "historical" data to access. It was one or multiple obsessed and/or manipulative people spreading insane ideas anonymously, and idiots falling for it. There's no secret inside some system out there, it's essentially just organic stupidity. Some believe the guy who owned 8chan was "Q", it's not an unreasonable idea, but it changes nothing.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago (3 children)

I think q-anon was in another chan

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago

It started on 4chan, only moved to 8chan (likely a different poster) much later.

See for example: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/how-three-conspiracy-theorists-took-q-sparked-qanon-n9005

Q posts moved from 4chan to its more toxic offshoot 8chan in November after a post claiming the original board had been “infiltrated.”

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago

Pools closed.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago
[–] [email protected] 44 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Turns out it was Bernie Sanders all along. Finally, the deep state megajew lizard retreats to his orbiting space station with the breakaway civilization and starts charging up the 5G covid laser while petting his chemically gay frog. Blissful oblivion is only moments away for the hairless ape race, unless the tall plieadian archangel Mick intervenes.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 27 points 3 days ago (1 children)

This is standard, vanilla lore in conspiracy circcles

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Wait till he gets to the modded lore.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago

Lore with bigger tits

[–] [email protected] 46 points 3 days ago (3 children)

I feel like the result of this is gonna be a big ol nothingburger. There’s no way someone works as a mod/admin for the most controversial website on the internet and uses an email address that can be linked to their real identity, and doesn’t use a VPN/tor.

Pretty sensationalist article IMO. I mean, they act like the source code being leaked is newsworthy. Somebody with a month of coding experience could write that website in an afternoon.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I already looked up 136 of the 219 leaked emails. 61 of them are in at least one data breach.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 3 days ago

There’s no way someone works as a mod/admin for the most controversial website on the internet and uses an email address that can be linked to their real identity, and doesn’t use a VPN/tor.

People are lazy as fuck and will do all kinds of things that surprise you especially when they become complacent.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Tell that to Ross Ulbricht, he used his personal gmail account for shit with silk road.

Plenty of people just know enough to get what they want done.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 days ago

Exactly this, but to be clear he used his personal email account on one forum where he made a post promoting it in the early days. Everything else was solid and, if they hadn't found the post, I don't think they would have been able to link him.

A chain is only as strong as it's weakest link and if the admin logs are descriptive enough, then it would only take one mistake to take down the metaphorical tower of cards.

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