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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.

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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: 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.