Making issues extra difficult is that Q’s on-line house base has modified a number of instances. Q’s posts in the beginning seemed on 4chan. Then they moved to 8chan, the place they stayed till that website online used to be taken offline final yr after the El Paso mass taking pictures. They now survive 8kun, a website online run through the previous proprietor of 8chan. Every of those websites makes use of a gadget of identification verification referred to as a “tripcode” — necessarily, a novel virtual signature that proves {that a} sequence of nameless posts had been written through the similar individual or other people.
“Drops” are what QAnon fans name Q’s posts. There were just about 5,000 of them up to now, and maximum take the type of a cryptic coded message.
Like what?
Right here’s an instance of a Q drop from September 2018:
PANIC IN DC
[LL] speaking = TRUTH disclose TARMAC [BC]?
[LL] speaking = TRUTH disclose COMEY HRC EMAIL CASE?
[LL] speaking = TRUTH disclose HUSSEIN directions re: HRC EMAIL CASE?
[LL] speaking = TRUTH disclose BRENNAN NO NAME COORD TO FRAME POTUS?……………..FISA = START
FISA BRINGS DOWN THE HOUSE.WHEN DO BIRDS SING?
Q
On this submit, you’ll see coded references to “LL” (Loretta Lynch, President Obama’s former lawyer normal), “BC” (Invoice Clinton), “HRC” (Hillary Rodham Clinton), and “HUSSEIN” (President Obama), along side references to John Brennan, the previous director of the Central Intelligence Company, the International Intelligence Surveillance Act, and “POTUS” — President Trump.
Many QAnon fans use “Q Drop” apps that acquire all of Q’s posts in a single position, and alert them each and every time a brand new submit arrives. (Such a apps hit the highest 10 paid apps in Apple’s App Retailer sooner than it used to be pulled down for violating the corporate’s pointers.) They then submit those drops in Fb teams, chat rooms for the Discord chat app and Twitter threads, and start discussing and debating what all of it method.
Is QAnon the similar factor as Pizzagate?
Sure and no. QAnon has been described as a “big-budget sequel” to Pizzagate, as it takes the unique Pizzagate conspiracy principle — which alleged, falsely, that Mrs. Clinton and her cronies had been running a kid sex-trafficking ring out of the basement of a Washington, D.C., pizza eating place — and provides many extra layers of narrative on best of it. However many of us consider in each theories, and for plenty of QAnon believers, Pizzagate represented one of those conspiracy principle on-ramp.
One new part in QAnon is plenty of transparent and explicit predictions about when and the way “The Hurricane” would play out. For years, Q has predicted that mass arrests of cabal individuals would happen on sure days, that sure govt reviews would disclose the cabal’s misdeeds, and that Republicans would win a lot of seats within the 2018 midterm elections.
None of the ones predictions got here true. However maximum QAnon believers didn’t care. They just discovered techniques to reframe the narrative and forget about the discrepancies, and moved on.