"It's over and nothing makes sense": QAnon believers struggle to cope with Biden inauguration

[DonViejo]

“Well I’m the official laughing stock of my family,” one QAnon follower said after Joe Biden was sworn in

By IGOR DERYSH

JANUARY 22, 2021 12:00PM (UTC)

Followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory have for years believed, in the face of all available evidence, that Donald Trump would soon begin mass arrests of his political foes and retain power indefinitely. Many of them appear to be struggling to cope with reality after President Joe Biden was sworn in on Wednesday and the mass arrests never came.

Many diehard conspiracy theorists, stoked by Trump and his top allies, have long predicted "The Storm," a day of reckoning Trump would lead the National Guard in mass arrests of Democrats, "deep state" elites and Hollywood celebrities whom Q fans believed were running a cannibalistic, satanic child trafficking ring. This would in turn usher in the "Great Awakening," when the world would discover that Trump had been leading the fight against this cabal all along. But the "storm" never came, and Trump flew off to his Mar-a-Lago golf resort as expected while Biden was sworn in as the 46th president. The only "mass arrests" were of Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, many of whom were dressed head-to-toe in QAnon gear.

"It's over and nothing makes sense," one QAnon forum user wrote. "Q was a LARP the entire fucking time," wrote another, describing the entire conspiracy theory as a live-action roleplaying game.

Link to tweet

QAnon, which is effectively a greatly amplified version of the baseless Pizzagate conspiracy theory, began in October 2017 when an anonymous poster on the far-right imageboard 4chan who went by "Q," and who claimed to be a high-level government official, and began to post "clues" about Trump's secret plot to take down the deep state, Democrats like former President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and celebrities like Tom Hanks and Chrissy Teigen. QAnon adherents had cited many previous dates in their past mass-arrest predictions that all came and went, but some still held out hope that Trump would lead the mass arrests right up until Biden was sworn in shortly before noon Eastern time on Wednesday. Some claimed that the National Guard troops deployed to protect Biden's swearing-in were actually there to carry out the mass arrests.

more
https://www.salon.com/2021/01/22/its-over-and-nothing-makes-sense-qanon-believers-struggle-to-cope-with-biden-inauguration/

[mikeysnot]

1. That's just the thing....

It never made sense in the first place.

[UpInArms]

2. Clueless dupes

They never understood that when it doesn’t make sense, it’s nonsense.

[The Wielding Truth]

3. Realization of personal fraud is painful and confusing. We told you the truth, but you chose Trump!

[safeinOhio]

7. Cognitive dissonance

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance


In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance occurs when a person holds contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values, and is typically experienced as psychological stress when they participate in an action that goes against one or more of them. According to this theory, when two actions or ideas are not psychologically consistent with each other, people do all in their power to change them until they become consistent.[1] The discomfort is triggered by the person's belief clashing with new information perceived, wherein they try to find a way to resolve the contradiction to reduce their discomfort.[1][2]

In A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (1957), Leon Festinger proposed that human beings strive for internal psychological consistency to function mentally in the real world. A person who experiences internal inconsistency tends to become psychologically uncomfortable and is motivated to reduce the cognitive dissonance. They tend to make changes to justify the stressful behavior, either by adding new parts to the cognition causing the psychological dissonance (rationalization) or by avoiding circumstances and contradictory information likely to increase the magnitude of the cognitive dissonance (confirmation bias).[2]

Coping with the nuances of contradictory ideas or experiences is mentally stressful. It requires energy and effort to sit with those seemingly opposite things that all seem true. Festinger argued that some people would inevitably resolve dissonance by blindly believing whatever they wanted to believe.

[The Wielding Truth]

11. Great post.

[Cirque du So-What]

14. When I try to explain this to people, I use a personal example

As a preteen, I enjoyed taking walks in the woods, purposely going in directions with which I was unfamiliar. I was a bit too successful one day and became completely disoriented. I wandered for a couple of hours and started getting worried. I eventually came to a clearing and saw a farm house beyond. I walked toward the house, hoping that the residents could help me find my way home, which I imagined was now halfway across the country. In the distance I saw a collie-mix dog running toward me, momentarily triggering my fight-or-flight reflex.

I stood still and allowed the dog, who by now seemed friendly, to reach my side. As I patted the dog, I looked at the house and felt a sensation like the earth spinning into a new alignment beneath my feet. I instantly recognized the house as the residence of a schoolmate; this was his dog. I had been past that house and seen this dog in the yard on countless times. I was about a half-mile from home and all was as it should be.

I’ve reflected on that incident frequently over the years, and the cognitive dissonance still astounds me. In a split second my belief system was turned on its ear and a new reality took its place. I hope those who got caught up in this deception have an epiphany that brings the world back into alignment.

[orangecrush]

4. Of course nothing makes sense

The usefulness of the idiots is over, so the russian disinformation pipeline has been shut down.

You were had by your "god emperor", suckers.

[TheBlackAdder]

5. It's tough to fathom what went wrong? It's not like they were willfully lied to or anything. 🤔

[safeinOhio]

6. Anyone else hear that interview on NPR

with a famous game designer? He said the whole Q thing was a giant computer game that people become addicted to. There are clues and as you figure them out you move to a higher level. You then get to hang out with those higher level players. Then you have an affiliation with that "tribe", a feeling of belonging to the group. It was very interesting and I wish now I had paid closer attention to it.

[blm]

8. Here's his article

https://medium.com/curiouserinstitute/a-game-designers-analysis-of-qanon-580972548be5

[safeinOhio]

9. Thank you.

We can count on DU.

[blogslut]

10. Pretty sure this is that guy

https://medium.com/curiouserinstitute/a-game-designers-analysis-of-qanon-580972548be5

In one of the very first experience fictions (XF) I ever designed, the players had to explore a creepy basement looking for clues. The object they were looking for was barely hidden and the clue was easy. It was Scooby Doo easy. I definitely expected no trouble in this part of the game.

But there was trouble. I didn’t know it then, but its name was APOPHENIA.

Apophenia is : “the tendency to perceive a connection or meaningful pattern between unrelated or random things (such as objects or ideas)”

As the participants started searching for the hidden object, on the dirt floor, were little random scraps of wood.

How could that be a problem!?

It was a problem because three of the pieces made the shape of a perfect arrow pointing right at a blank wall. It was uncanny. It had to be a clue...

[Irish_Dem]

12. "It was a Larp the whole time." Live Action Role Playing Game

Except it was real, and you got people killed.
And you will go to jail.

[Iliyah]

13. I have a cousin who is QAnon . ..

1. He believed that the US SC would install t-rump.

2. Since that did not happen, he believed a military coup was at hand, and was quite please on Jan. 6th.

3. Since the over turning of the government did not happen, the arrest of former Presidents and their wives were imminent, as well as including President Biden and Vice President Harris, hence a formal military trial and execution.

4. Since that did not happen, now, he believes that within 4 years, number 3 will happen.

[CanonRay]

15. I love the smell of schadenfreude in the morning

[dalton99a]

16. They should just rework the numerology

[Tommymac]

17. Qanon is a bunch of crazed delusional fools.

And needs to be treated as such...

whose actions resulted in the deaths of 5 people including an officer of the Law.

Take away their megaphones and let them sit and shout and play with each other in a plie of their own feces.

[Blue Owl]

18. It's Fitzmas for Freepers