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One of the dangerous things about believing QAnon to be some outlying phenomenon is that they are just very open about something many do internally without knowing it, and they do it for the same reason: chaos is terrifying and order is comfortable. [thread/]
![One of the dangerous things about believing QAnon to be some outlying phenomenon is that they are just very open about something many do internally without knowing it, and they do it for the same reason: chaos is terrifying and order is comfortable. [thread/]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EqQTLgaW4AYjAQF.jpg "One of the dangerous things about believing QAnon to be some outlying phenomenon is that they are just very open about something many do internally without knowing it, and they do it for the same reason: chaos is terrifying and order is comfortable. [thread/]")
And again, they are just—right now—the most obnoxious folks engaged in a public quest toward taking the unknown and giving it meaning before there is any meaning to give. [thread/]
But I watched the “Anthony Quinn Warner” feed on Twitter yesterday and it was all some variation of the same approach.
Liberals convinced it was MAGA, MAGA folks convinced it was a patsy. Q saying it's a message. A few less-convincing approaches to tie it to ANTIFA. [thread/]
Liberals convinced it was MAGA, MAGA folks convinced it was a patsy. Q saying it's a message. A few less-convincing approaches to tie it to ANTIFA. [thread/]
Some MAGA folks—weary of Q—saying something is fishy but Q is an invention of the left to make the right look nuts. In all it was more or less an orgy of folks who had, absent of any information, already lined up to assign it some self-serving meaning out of nothing. [thread/]
For some that meaning came by way of pre-emptive distancing from potential association (if he’s a patsy or falsely accused, it absolves them if the bombing was done to serve a similar worldwide as theirs). For others, it was proof the other “side” is crazy. [thread/]
It is jarring to watch these narratives—which will mutate over time to coexist with whatever comes from an actual investigation—take shape. And the actual investigation itself, and media coverage, will not be immune from being shaped by various biases and faults. [thread/]
QAnon shares a similar narrative structure to cults in that there are folks who agree and they are a family, and there are the others. These are either folks who may one day realize it’s right, or they are enemies. They are more overt in naming what drives them. [thread/]
Which is substantiating that nothing is random. Everything has meaning. The inherent discomfort that is inevitable by living in this world is scary, so they, in real time—without much actual logic but with narrative structures that allow for malleability—assign meaning. [thread/]
But this isn’t much different from watching folks on all sides of ideological belief line up to assign to this bombing, and the suspect, some meaning before we know anything. It actually functions somewhat identically, but without a vocabulary or imagined leader. [thread/]
And it functions on a similar level—there are potential converts and there are enemies—and it is meant to serve the same purpose: to create in our minds order out of the chaos that is inevitable in our lives. [thread/]
In the early days of the Internet the promise was that with all of this free flowing information maybe we could see the truths without the gatekeepers and we would be better off. And to some extent, in some forms, that HAS happened. [thread/]
But tendencies toward dogma are inborn gate keepers. Psychological and sociological programming lead us to find meaning where there is not yet any. From an evolutionary perspective, things without explanation were harbingers of annihilation. They invoke dread. [thread/]
We tend to lean on creating order out of nothing to save ourselves from that threat in the short term even though it means another form of large-scale social annihilation down the road. [thread/]
In those early days of the Internet what had not been considered is the lack of boundaries around data—the liberation of information—would also result in creating a cottage industry of highly influential quacks and micro-cult leaders who fan these fires for profit. [thread/]
Who has a greater chance of making a living online? Folks who sift through the data and remind that some form of chaos and un-knowing is always inevitable, or people who cherrypick and double down on creating significance out of nothing? [thread/]
And so yes, believing Anthony Quinn Warner ultimately means A Q Warner is WILD, but it is only a slightly elevated form of quackery that is—online—commonplace and rooted in our highly understandable and easy to manipulate aversion to feeling unsettled in not knowing. [end]
