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It is genuinely tough to take QAnon seriously, but thanks to a vast misinformation network, and people’s willingness to believe just about anything, we have to.

There are countless stories of families being torn apart by somebody (usually a parent) who genuinely believes that a cabal of Satan-worshipping Democrats, Hollywood celebrities, and billionaires are harvesting a life-extending chemical from the blood of abused children, and there are signs that the baseless theory is gaining traction here in South Africa.

Only Donald Trump can save the world, and he will, on a date that keeps on changing as each prophecy fails to come to fruition.

The most in-depth and extensive docuseries to delve into QAnon, Q: Into the Storm, just finished airing recently, and the six-part series aims to uncover the forces behind QAnon.

Before we deliver any spoilers, here’s the trailer for the HBO docuseries:

Director Cullen Hoback spent three years sniffing around, waiting for somebody to slip up, and he says somebody finally did.

At this point, spoilers will follow, so if you would prefer to watch the series for yourself, be gone.

CNET reports:

Hoback believes the person behind Q is Ron Watkins, the son of 8chan/8kun owner Jim Watkins. 8chan was a loosely moderated message board that was a haven for white supremacists where users’ identities were kept anonymous…

Hoback felt that during a conversation in late 2020, he was able to confirm his suspicion that Q was the younger Watkins.

“I’ve spent the past … almost 10 years, every day, doing this kind of research anonymously. Now I’m doing it publicly, that’s the only difference,” Ron Watkins told Hoback during a video chat. This was a reference to his secret identity as Q, according to Hoback…

Here’s the moment that happens:

This is the big reveal in the finale of #QIntotheStorm where Ron Watkins says too much to Cullen Hoback and lets his guard slip.

It was so good it made the whole six hours worth it. pic.twitter.com/QzwTGNcl5q

— Shayan Sardarizadeh (@Shayan86) April 5, 2021

Oops.

Watkins knows, as soon as he says it, that he’s made a serious blunder.

He’s long been suspected of writing the cryptic posts alleging that Trump was waging war against Satan-worshipping paedophiles, but has always denied this, and continues to do so.

There is other evidence that Hoback uses to link Watkins to the Q posts:

In the final episode, Hoback begins to recount the instances in which Ron Watkins played dumb on the activities of Q, only to then seemingly have in-depth insight into Q’s intentions. There were also images of pens and watches in multiple posts by Q, and Hoback noticed during the filming of the series that those were two interests Ron Watkins had.

Another piece of evidence that appears to point to Ron Watkins being Q came after a mass shooting in 2019 at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas. The shooter posted about his intentions on 8chan that day. Once this information came to light, the site temporarily lost its hosting service. When the site returned, Q was able to post right away, which Hoback says is something only site administrators could do at the time.

Whilst Hoback may well have locked down who Q is, or at least who one of the people posting as Q is, the docuseries will struggle to dissuade believers, who are so invested at this point that there is little to no hope of ever extracting them from the delusion.

There are also those, like Joan Donovan, director of the Technology and Social Change Project at Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center, who say that Q “is a collective ensemble of different interested parties that have different levels of knowledge and different access points to the infrastructure… [and] there’s no single person who could be Q.”

Perhaps there will one day be a definitive answer, but for now, believers will continue to cling onto the hope that the likes of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, George Soros, Bill Gates, Tom Hanks, Oprah Winfrey, Chrissy Teigen and Pope Francis are in for a day of reckoning.

[source:cnet]