Here's a welcoming development from batshit crazy conspiracy world. Donald Trump's presidency ended Wednesday with the inauguration of Joe Biden as our 46th president. Meanwhile, many followers of the QAnon conspiracy now don't know where to turn.
The whole point of the conspiracy was that events surrounding the former president were not as they seemed, and that they were a ruse to take down alleged satanic pedophile occultists running the government. Arrests of said satanic pedophile occultists were supposed to be imminent - several years ago. It was alleged that once those arrests happened, Trump's true role would be revealed and he would stay in power. Only it wasn't, and he didn't.
Trump's role as president has been so central to the belief system that his leaving could create some genuinely jarring cognitive dissonance for true believers. Travis View, who hosts a podcast about the conspiracy theory called QAnon Anonymous, shared a video of one woman who is struggling to cope with the realization that the whole story behind QAnon is collapsing.
"So, who else is feeling just a little silly?" she asked. "Just a little... went too far down the rabbit hole, and now I'm back out again. And if nothing happens on the 20th, how many of you are going to feel stupid as hell? I can't do it anymore!" She shifted to talking about Q, the pseudonymous writer behind the cryptic posts that have fueled the QAnon conspiracists. Q's predictions have repeatedly proven false.
"And who the fuck is Q? Who is he? Who is this person?" she asked. "Cause none of it has come true! And I was just thinking — what if this person knows that none of this stuff is true? And they're just messing with people? Like, getting inside their heads? I thought something would happen today, in Trump's speech. Nothing!"
I've been pointing out for a long time that none of Q's predictions ever come true. Remember Calm Before The Stupid from 2018? Yeah, "The Storm" was the conspiracy theory that eventually morphed into QAnon. It was named based on a tweet from Trump about "the calm before the storm" - which is a figure of speech that could have meant anything, especially given the vague language found in some of the former president's tweets.
I figured the whole thing was likely bullshit from the get-go. The Pizzagate stuff was all about an imaginary basement where (presumably imaginary) child abuse was taking place. But where it absolutely lost me was when the Satanist occultists drinking the blood of children to get high on adrenochrome were glommed into the theory. The David Icke lizard people stuff came later, but that would have absolutely lost me too if I wasn't already gone.
Follow my math here. The number of occultists is tiny compared to the general population. It also is tiny compared to the membership of any mainstream religion. Satanist occultists are a subset of that. And Satanist occultists willing to abduct/abuse/murder children just to obtain a chemical you can easily order on Amazon? I'm not sure anybody that stupid exists. Oh, and adrenochrome doesn't get you high. It was tested at one point as a blood pressure medication but it proved too ineffective to be worth developing.
Anyway, the heartening bit of news here is that at least some folks who were on board with the conspiracy are starting to realize how ridiculous it is. I do get that much of it was the sort of thing that Trump supporters wanted to hear - their guy wasn't really a narcisccistic jerk, but a "very stable genius" playing multidimnensional chess or whatever with the liberals that they couldn't stand. But there's a big difference between believing in a political figure and allowing that belief to be twisted into acceptance of the flat-out impossible.
So for those who are finally waking up, welcome back to reality. As for the rest, it seems to me that they should consider some of this and think it over carefully before they wind up like "Q-Shaman" - who stormed the capitol for Trump and was then left facing prison time without a pardon from the former president. Abandoning this nonsense is clearly the most reasonable course of action, and I recommend getting going while the going is good.
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