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QAnon again - fascinating

Journal by c0lo

A Game Designer’s Analysis Of QAnon - Playing with reality (20min+ read. A bit lengthy, but it worth)

In brief - apophenia. Just a tad more elaborated - induced/guided aphonenia.

What's fascinating is the buttons of human psyche that are pushed to sink people deep into the rabbit holes:
- Follow The Breadcrumbs - don't tell, just select the dots that are to be connected
- The Eureka Effect - the rush of the Aha! moments and the feeling of being rewarded
- Lamestream Media - passivate against the reality that's not supportive to the agenda
- Community - sense of belonging, behavior reinforcement; a population large and motivated enough to adopt an evolutionary strategy in selecting the best CT-es

All the above are exemplified - and these examples is how I got to get WTF Beyoncé has to do with QAnon.

So, if all it's an Alternate Reality Game, there's no harm, right? Not so fast, the US Military Academy ran the The QAnon Conspiracy Theory: A Security Threat in the Making? article in its "Combating Terrorism Center" journal, stating

QAnon represents a public security threat with the potential in the future to become a more impactful domestic terror threat. This is true especially given that conspiracy theories have a track record of propelling terrorist violence elsewhere in the West as well as QAnon’s more recent influence on mainstream political discourse.

QAnon again - fascinating | Log In/Create an Account | Top | 102 comments | Search Discussion
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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday November 18 2020, @12:47PM (11 children)

    by c0lo (156) on Wednesday November 18 2020, @12:47PM (#1078758) Journal

    QAnon is classified here as a "threat to public safety", based on very slim pretext. I wonder if narratives that result in calls for censorship are similarly threats to public safety? Seems possible, even likely, amirite?

    I guess my beef here comes from the latter "threat to public safety" stuff. QAnon is less of a risk to public safety than narratives that exaggerate it as a threat and then on that basis propose substantial harm on society. But that's the same sort of games that QAnon plays in the first place. Surely, our discourse and strategoes for dealing with QAnon should be better than the processes that created QAnon

    Sure, khallow, it may be many things. Like:

    • it may be that the CTCSentinel is part of the lamestream media, just a bunch of stupid sheeple regurgitating SJW lefty propaganda and in reality QAnons are just sane people having a bit of fun in an ARG (that's Alternate Reality Game). So we can safely discard 's narrative, that's nothing more than a narrative, bedtime stories as it were.
      And the proper reaction when they go low is for you to jump over the high moral horse, a jump about deep-into-stratosphere-high would be good
    • or it may be that the US Army is indeed part of the swamp conspiracy, just waiting to come after you and everybody else and make you pay your speech by each word, so that your speech will no longer be free but paid for
    • it may be a lot of more other things, including they are objectively assessing the reality and the associated risks

    Who knows? It's not like we have the Occam's razor to decide which is the simplest explanation that accounts for their reaction.

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  
    Total Score:   2  

  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday November 18 2020, @05:41PM (10 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday November 18 2020, @05:41PM (#1078861) Journal
    Sure, it could be those things. I don't buy that, of course, given the massive amount of security theater over the past two decades.

    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday November 18 2020, @10:59PM (9 children)

      by c0lo (156) on Wednesday November 18 2020, @10:59PM (#1079003) Journal

      If the US Army is engaged in security theater, US is fucked:
      1. any RW adversary won't play by the rules of the theater and yet the US Army spends on theater
      2. with US Army as an enemy, I'm not betting on the population.

      Of course, buy it or not, it's plausible that the US Army doesn't give a fuck about what part of the US population smokes to go crazy, as long as the crazed Americans don't start to terrorize others and the US Army is objectively assessing this kind of terrorism as real.

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 19 2020, @01:20AM (8 children)

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday November 19 2020, @01:20AM (#1079039) Journal

        If the US Army is engaged in security theater, US is fucked:

        Indeed. Vietnam War is a good example of the sort of thing that happens. BTW, I was referring to the narrative spun by the author of the second piece. That's not the US military.

        We have lots of security theater in the US over the past two decades. It doesn't become any more useful because it's QAnon rather than brown people, Antifa, Insane Clown Posse, or the many other grossly exaggerated dangers of the world.

        • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday November 19 2020, @01:32AM (7 children)

          by c0lo (156) on Thursday November 19 2020, @01:32AM (#1079042) Journal

          BTW, I was referring to the narrative spun by the author of the second piece. That's not the US military.

          No, it's the "Combating Terrorism Center" of the West Point Millitary Academy which published it as a study and not as an opinion piece.

          I feel you're thinking "the progs infiltrated the Army too", yeah?
          It matters not to you that they based their analysis on real life cases, because it contradicts your beliefs and you're not gonna drop those beliefs, reality be damn'd.

          --
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0

          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 19 2020, @02:03AM (6 children)

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday November 19 2020, @02:03AM (#1079053) Journal

            No, it's the "Combating Terrorism Center" of the West Point Millitary Academy which published it as a study and not as an opinion piece.

            Opinion pieces published as studies are still opinion pieces. This isn't your first time you've made this mistake [soylentnews.org].

            • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday November 19 2020, @02:12AM (2 children)

              by c0lo (156) on Thursday November 19 2020, @02:12AM (#1079056) Journal

              I'll let you with your opinions of this was not a study, and it's not published by the US Army and QAnon is just a bunch of funny guys.

              --
              https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0

              • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 19 2020, @03:55AM

                by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday November 19 2020, @03:55AM (#1079074) Journal
                You're committing the argument from authority fallacy. An opinion piece, published by the US Army is still an opinion piece.

                and QAnon is just a bunch of funny guys.

                Where's the evidence otherwise? Seriously, you'll get bad eggs in any grouping of people, much less a crazy one. For a bunch of crazy people, they're pretty peaceful.

              • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 19 2020, @04:06PM

                by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday November 19 2020, @04:06PM (#1079241) Journal
                For another example that this is an opinion piece, consider the weasel-speak I quoted.

                Already, then, QAnon supporters are trying to have an increased impact on mainstream discourse in the United States. With this mainstreaming, as well as the impending presidential election that seems likely to only increase QAnon’s salience, an increasing frequency of criminal or violent acts by QAnon supporters seems possible, even likely.

                "Seems possible, even likely".

                However, the threat to public security that QAnon presents is not exclusive to the movement and the cases described above, but rather, is representative of broader currents in the American information landscape. The increased consumption and circulation of misinformation on social media, as well as its negative consequences, is evinced especially by QAnon, but its effects on public safety are not limited to it. The emergence of future (related or unrelated) conspiracy theories that may be effective at radicalizing individuals to terrorist violence should thus not be ruled out as threats to public security.

                "should thus not be ruled out".

                Regulation of QAnon content by social media companies, activity which would be guided and governed by the adherence of QAnon supporters to respective platforms terms of service, may present one pathway to decreasing the likelihood of individual radicalization to violence.104 This could operate similarly to Facebook and Twitter regulation of jihadi content by the Islamic State and al-Qa`ida affiliates. On July 21, 2020, Twitter announced105 that it will be taking action against QAnon in light of “coordinated harmful activity.” Already Twitter has suspended 7,000 accounts and will be limiting 150,000 more.106

                "may present".

                There's all these dire predictions that "may" happen about things that "seem" bad possibly. What's missing is the null hypothesis - that QAnon might not have detrimental effects.

                Here's my take. Crazy people will believe crazy things anyway - you're not talking about a group that would be healthy, productive members of society in the absence of QAnon. And while they're ranting about child-eating molesters on the internets (or whatever the present QAnon thing is), they're socializing and not breaking stuff or hurting people.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 19 2020, @06:09AM (2 children)

              by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 19 2020, @06:09AM (#1079100)

              khallow, he is just kind of pink and fluffy collateral damage. He has no idea how he is being played, and in this regard, he resembles closely the Runaway, with the potentional difference that khallow has read some books.

              (Oh, and khallow, since you didn't get it the first, or second or third, times, remember when you wanted me to remind you when you did that thing we talked about, again? Well, you are doing it again, just to let you know. If you don't remember, I have to say that those abducting aliens are nothing if not thorough!!)

              • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 19 2020, @03:15PM

                by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday November 19 2020, @03:15PM (#1079200) Journal

                He has no idea how he is being played

                By who?

              • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 19 2020, @03:16PM

                by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday November 19 2020, @03:16PM (#1079201) Journal

                Oh, and khallow, since you didn't get it the first, or second or third, times, remember when you wanted me to remind you when you did that thing we talked about, again?

                I no longer care. It's quite clear you're doing this in bad faith.