Pastel QAnon

[Nevilledog]

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Marc-André Argentino
@_MAArgentino
1/ In my latest for @GNET_research here is part one on the series about the role of women in QAnon: "Pastel QAnon"

Pastel QAnon
gnet-research.org
6:25 AM · Mar 17, 2021

Author discusses findings here:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1372177313681522693.html

https://gnet-research.org/2021/03/17/pastel-qanon/

On 21 July 2020, Twitter Safety announced that they will be taking a stronger enforcement against “behavior that has the potential to lead to offline harm” and decided that Twitter would no longer serve QAnon content in trends, not highlight QAnon content in searches and block QAnon URLs on the platform. On 19 August 2020, Facebook updated their policies to address movements and organisations tied to violence, to address the growing threat posed by QAnon and similar movements. Following these policy changes and their impact on the QAnon community’s capacity to spread propaganda and recruit new members, QAnon decided to hijack “left-wing” hashtags on Twitter to circumvent their new policies. The impact of this was QAnon took over #SaveTheChildren, which was trending in July due to their awareness raising campaign. This led the QAnon ideology to bleed into new digital ecosystems and form new radicalisation pipelines. The consequence was the explosion of a phenomenon I have called Pastel QAnon.

Pastel QAnon refers to the community of female influencers initially found on Instagram, but now present across multiple platforms (MeWe, Telegram, Parler, Gab, etc.). Many began as lifestyle bloggers, fitness instructors, diet influencers, esoteric spiritualists or promoters of alternative healing. The “Pastel” refers to the unique aesthetic and branding these influencers provided to their pages and in turn QAnon by using social media templates like Canva. Aesthetically, Canva is a popular option for Instagram influencers for developing a brand. Canva was ultimately used to soften the messages from QAnon that was shared on these pages, which could be subtle or not so much. Sometimes the QAnon content is not in the images but in the message alongside the post. Albums are another branding trick that are used to maintain page aesthetic, which also serves as a camouflage for those who are not followers or just browsing their page. The QAnon content is at times hidden a few pictures into the albums. The aesthetic and branding created by these influencers softens QAnon’s propaganda grounded in Chan culture and imagery. The Pastel aesthetic is the polar opposite of the “raw” QAnon content that would be found on 8kun. In softening QAnon propaganda, the Pastel QAnon community creates new recruitment and radicalisation pipelines into female dominated ecosystems. Not every post these influencers shared were slathered with QAnon hashtags or propaganda, rather it is dispersed among their other content and brand.

Using a sample of 76 influencers in the Pastel QAnon community (with a total of 2,700,000 followers), here is a breakdown of the type of accounts that are found in this analysis:

1. There is multi-level marketing QAnon, which is comprised of Instagram influencers who had built their initial brands via various MLM schemes: e.g., Arbonne, Tupperware, essential oils, exotic salts, camel milk, etc.

2. There is esoteric QAnon, which is comprised of Instagram influencers who have built their brands around Gnosticism, yoga, crystals, 5th dimension spirituality, tarot reading, mediumship, belief in angels, light-weavers, belief in Pleiadians or the Galactic federation.

3. Lifestyle influencer QAnon is comprised of women who built their brand as Instagram fitness coaches, fitness models, and lifestyle coaches who use their influencer over their followers to radicalise them onto QAnon propaganda.

4. Alternative healing QAnon is comprised of Instagram influencers that built their brand as mommy bloggers, through the promotion of natural parenting, exotic diets, anti-vaccines, or alternative medicine and cures, who now also amplify QAnon propaganda on top of their medical disinformation.

The initial attempt to regulate QAnon by the platforms, the hijacking of #SaveTheChildren by QAnon, and the anti-child trafficking propaganda associated the #SaveTheChildren, which initially pilled these influencers, morphed into #SaveOurChildren, which lead to global protests against child trafficking and played an important role in sustaining the Pastel QAnon community in its initial growing pains. Female influencers in QAnon also played a role in connecting Pastel QAnon with the wider QAnon community. To that end Pastel QAnon also adapted their narratives to spread QAnon propaganda related to the 2020 US general election.

*snip*

[sanatanadharma]

1. All variations upon the root cause of human problems

People who always capitalize "Me" and do not understand the word "we".