[dleslie]

That's really not so different than many previous popular conspiracy theories.

Replace QAnon's pedophile elite with one of:

- The Catholic Church

- Free Masons

- Rosicrutians

- Illuminati

- Jewish Bankers

- Satanist Elites

- Lizard People

- The CIA

- UN Globalists w/ Agenda 21

- And so on...

What makes a conspiracy theory really _stick_ is when it confounds a _kernel of truth_. The more convincing and defensible that kernel of truth is, the easier it is to build conjecture upon.

Ie, the CIA probably isn't directing world affairs, but they do certainly engage in political actions to disrupt the course of nations, and so many extrapolate their influence to extents we don't have evidence for.

QAnon's kernel of truth is the incredibly alluring and defensible idea that politicians cannot be trusted and many are not working in our best interest. From there... The sky's the limit.

[m_ke]

I agree, but as mentioned here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24159257 QAnon has morphed into a master conspiracy to unite all of these crazy groups.

The same people that push Qanon are also pushing anti mask, anti vaccine and etc conspiracies.

[dleslie]

I saw that, but I'm not convinced that the breadth of scope is what's interesting. The other targets of interest I mentioned are also often "big tent" or "broad umbrella" conspiracies that pull in many others.

Ie, Lizard people come from the Hollow Earth and are conspiring with Planned Parenhood and UN Agenda 21 to depopulate the planet; this is a believed conspiracy you can find on conspiracy boards.

What makes QAnon different is that it's a movement that exists largely as a result of the sophistication of modern social networks and the ability of small groups of people to wield enormous platforms on them.

The Anti-Vax, Birther and Sandy Hook conspiracies were sort of the early progenitors of this medium: they took the conversations off the aged PHPbb boards and various sub-reddits and on to the social networks. QAnon is often _the same people_ simply continuing to talk with each other.

They've just been learning how to use the tools at their disposal, and have become proficient at it.