Before someone uses that title to try to get me cancelled, let me clarify: it’s not that I want the governments of the world to be run by a cabal of Satan worshippers who kill children to harvest their precious bodily fluids.
But a great conspiracy that explains everything would make it so much easier to understand the world. Instead of coming to grips with everything being so complicated and maybe having to accept some personal responsibility for your own failings, it would be so much better if we could identify a secret overlord pulling the strings. Then we’d know who to take down.
More importantly, if QAnon wasn’t a shitposter based in the Philippines but actually a top secret government official revealing all of the elites’ darkest secrets, then I wouldn’t have to feel sorry for all the people who’ve dedicated their lives, at the expense of their friends, family, employment and sanity, to this cult.
Like Valerie Gilbert, the self-professed “meme queen”:
…She loves assembling her own reality in real time, patching together shards of information and connecting them to the core narrative. (She once spent several minutes explaining how a domino-shaped ornament on the White House Christmas tree proved that Mr. Trump was sending coded messages about QAnon, because the domino had 17 dots, and Q is the 17th letter of the alphabet.)
When she solves a new piece of the puzzle, she posts it to Facebook, where her QAnon friends post heart emojis and congratulate her.
This collaborative element, which some have likened to a massively multiplayer online video game, is a big part of what drew Ms. Gilbert to QAnon and keeps her there now.
“I am really good at putting symbols together,” she said.
Believing in QAnon tends to clear one’s social calendar, and Ms. Gilbert is no exception. She cut ties with her closest friends years ago, after arguing with them about Pizzagate. She is estranged from her sister, who tried and failed to stage an intervention over her Facebook posts.
She is divorced and has lived alone for years, and the pandemic has only sharpened her isolation. She thinks the danger of Covid-19 is overblown, and refuses to wear a mask (except at the grocery store, where she has no choice). As a result, her neighbors steer clear of her, and she feels their wrath every time she steps outside.
“I am called names and abused,” she told me during a recent call. “A 90-year-old woman who lives in my building cursed me out today on the sidewalk.”
Ms. Gilbert insists that she’s a lone wolf by choice, but becoming a pariah has clearly taken a toll. She compares Manhattan to Nazi Germany, and speaks bitterly about the friends she has lost. (I talked to several of those former friends. They miss her, but can’t imagine reconciling with her in her current state.)
Or Audrey Ann Southard, a music teacher and singer who performed on stage at Carnegie Hall, turned Capitol Hill barbarian:
The Spring Hill vocal coach and piano teacher sang like an angel when she posted videos of herself crooning Norah Jones’ Don’t Know Why or belting out Memory from Cats, and when she went to Sicily in 2012 for an international music competition, she won.
That led to a showcase on a stage inside New York’s Carnegie Hall.
More recently, Southard used her powerful sopranoto scream at police officers that they should “tell f--king Pelosi we’re coming for her! F--king traitorous c--ts, we’re coming! We’re coming for all of you!” She was part of the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
[…]
Days later in Florida, Myndee Washington was watching Ali Velshi’s coverage of the Capitol on MSNBC and was shocked to see a familiar face. The woman looked disheveled, her gray hair wet and pulled back, and her usual makeup wiped away after a pepper spraying. But Washington was 100 percent sure it was her old friend Southard.
The women met in 2010 while performing in a community theater production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at Stage West Playhouse. Washington said they became fast friends, started having dinner and shopping together.
“Audrey was very effervescent, very passionate,” Washington said. “We’re both artists, and despite what some people think of registered Democrats, I have very strong family values, and she did, too. We’re both middle class, raised in the theater and singing at church and community events. It was almost like kindred spirits.”
Washington said that her friend became more openly political late into President Barack Obama’s first term.
“I was never really that political, but I do think you should respect the office,” Washington said. “She started to become involved with the Tea Party, singing God Bless America at their events, and she was really into the birther stuff, posting on Facebook that Obama was not born here.”
The women grew apart. They eventually went so far in their respective directions that they came full circle by the time they met again.
Washington was marching with a Black Lives Matter group in New Port Richey after the death of George Floyd last summer when a car pulled up and a woman got out screaming.
“Telling us to get jobs, get off welfare, back the blue,” Washington said. “I immediately recognized Audrey.” She had not seen her in years, but she started streaming a live video from her phone and called Southard out by name. After that, they officially stopped being friends, on Facebook.
It’s tempting to laugh at these people, but stories like this just make me kind of depressed. When you join a cult, presumably there’s an earthly and/or eternal reward in it for you at some point. The people at Jonestown really thought they were building a socialist paradise in the jungles of Guyana.
As for the QAnon people, what’s the endgame? Keeping Donald Trump, a man who would discard them like a used tissue, in power? And then what happens?
Maybe it’s just seeing the people they don’t like get hurt. And that’s its own reward. Might be fun for a little while - God knows, the schadenfreude I felt when the TV networks declared Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 Presidential election was absolutely intoxicating - but it wears off pretty quickly.
These people will either go to their graves thinking the Great Awakeningᵀᴹ is right around the corner, or they’ll realize they’ve been had. And Donald Trump sure as heck won’t do anything to make them whole.
What a waste. There’s nothing funny about it.
As I’ve written before, I have somewhat mixed feelings about the great social-media purge following the beer belly putsch at the U.S. Capitol. One of my biggest concerns is that driving extremists to more obscure, secretive platforms might make it harder to keep tabs on them.
Axios notes the flip side of this argument: it’s thrown the extreme right into total disarray and makes it harder for them to recruit new followers.
Researchers see one bright spot as far-right extremists turn to private and encrypted online platforms: Friction.
Between the lines: For fringe organizers, those platforms may provide more security than open social networks, but they make it harder to recruit new members.
Catch up quick: The online far right is moving away from mainstream social networks and onto both right-wing-welcoming networks like Gab and privacy-friendly platforms like Telegram and Signal, due largely to the collision ofthree events:
Public social media activity left a trail that's been exposing the identities of a growing list of Capitol rioters.
The far right is exiting large social networks, either as a political statement or under force of a ban, as tech platforms crack down on extremists.
WhatsApp botched the rollout of a new privacy policy, confusing and worrying a massive number of users of all political stripes who then went looking for alternatives.
The catch: As the fringe right burrows underground, experts say it will quickly learn how much harder it is to organize there than on wide-open channels like Facebook and Twitter.
Here's why:
1) Every added stepis a chance to lose a follower.
Having to download apps and go through steps to verify their identities is bound to dissuade people from joining, said Matt Mitchell, a technology fellow at the Ford Foundation.
And when a platform goes down — as an extended Signal outage Friday illustrated — it cuts off the intake entirely.
2) You don't always knowwho you're talking to. It can be trivially easy in some cases for outsiders to infiltrate private online groups — something not lost on extremists.
"We're seeing more recognition among groups on platforms like Telegram, Gab and MeWe that there are security researchers, law enforcement officials and journalists in these groups," said Bryce Webster-Jacobsen, Director of Intelligence at cyber intelligence firm GroupSense.
3) You can still be deplatformedeven on private or semi-private forums.
Telegram has been deleting hate-group channels in recent days.
Discord, another chat client, banned a major pro-Trump server earlier this month.
Walkie-talkie app Zello deleted more than 2,000 channels being used by militia groups following an investigation by The Guardian.
4) Out of sight, out of mind. Experts say domestic terrorists face a similar problem that groups like ISIS have faced after being deplatformed: recruiting gets harder.
When images and videos are removed from more public platforms, it becomes more difficult for hate groups to draw in fresh members.
The flip side of that is the possibility that those who remain active on alt-right forums could become even more radicalized:
Yes, but: Research shows thatwhen fringe groups are banned from mainstream platforms, the bans often push bad actors to even darker parts of the web, where the conversation becomes even more toxic.
That means that while far-right groups may have a harder time drawing in fresh blood than they did on mainstream social networks, the ones that do show up could be more dedicated to the cause.
What's next: The scrutiny (and channel deletions) now rising among the alternative platforms could create smaller and even more radical splinter groups.
"You have one fire to take out and instead you made 500 burning embers," said Mitchell.
It would be cruelly ironic if this made another storming of the Capitol less likely, but another Oklahoma City bombing easier to organize in secret. Hopefully we’ll never have to find out.
In other social media news…
The Boeing 737 Max is returning to Canadian skies:
The Boeing 737 MAX can return to Canadian airspace beginning Wednesday, Transport Canada says, concluding nearly two years of government review after the aircraft was involved in two deadly crashes that saw the planes grounded worldwide.
The planes will be permitted to fly as long as they meet conditions specified by Transport Canada in December, including allowing pilots to disable a faulty warning system that was found to be central to two deadly crashes in 2018 and 2019.
"Canadians and the airline industry can rest assured that Transport Canada has diligently addressed all safety issues prior to permitting this aircraft to return to service in Canadian airspace," said Transport Minister Omar Alghabra.
The measures go beyond those announced by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration in November, which required Boeing to make changes to the computer systems inside the plane and required pilots to undergo training in flight simulators.
[…]
The aircraft's approval in Canada will help struggling airlines, which rely on the smaller, fuel-efficient MAX for long flights. But Canada's carriers now face a new challenge: convincing consumers to actually fly on the aircraft, a task made even more daunting by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Surveys have shown that people are still skittish about the MAX. A survey of 1,757 flyers conducted by Barclays in May found that 21 per cent would never fly on a MAX and 23 per cent planned to wait a year or more before doing so.
Restoring public confidence in the MAX will be key as airlines look to capitalize on an anticipated recovery in demand this summer, when a COVID-19 vaccine is expected to become available for many Canadians. Air Canada, the country's largest carrier, has 24 MAX aircraft in its fleet, while WestJet and Sunwing have 13 and four, respectively.
Personally, I think the 737 Max might be the safest airliner at the moment, because it will be under the microscope for a long time.
This isn’t the first time an American airliner has found itself in this uncomfortable position. The McDonnell Douglas DC-10 was grounded after some high-profile accidents in the seventies, and while the plane (and its successor, the MD-11) went on to serve airlines well, its reputation never fully recovered:
The first thing we can do to stay out of unhealthy groups that steer us the wrong way is to take responsibility: for ourselves, for our behavior, for our effects on the world, for others who need help. And seek out friends and social associations that share these purposes.
No group or person that cares about people should be asking them to give up anything unreasonable - such as their jobs, normal social lives, etc. When that starts happening, it seems to become a vicious cycle as past friends etc. drop away and the cult becomes their only viable social connection.
The same problem exists in other ways, such as girls who are trafficked into sex work becoming recruiters themselves eventually and abused persons protecting their abusers.
Brilliant - would love a link to twitter to be able to post this