It always seemed to me that QAnon was some sort of online LARP on 4chan that got out of control and metastasized. It’s left a trail of broken families and swept into the mainstream with branding and everything. After the predictions of Trump’s return to power after Jan 6th it seems to have fizzled out. Did QAnon stop posting? Did their adherents just glom onto the next crazy theory? How many followers now disavow the theories of QAnon?
It kind of merged into a couple things, from what I’ve seen: “wellness” (you know the kind, antivaxx mommy blog crap, Joe Rogan raw meat diets, supplements), “preppers” (people ready for a race war and living off the grid a la The Turner Diaries), and the “tradwife/MIGTOW” stuff. There’s the splinter adherents from various right-wing influencer podcasts thinking JFK or whoever is going to reemerge at Dealy Plaza, but those invariably fizzle out. The integration into broader movements is where it’s thriving. You get lured in with yoga, then next thing you know you’re canning beans because you won’t be the one eating bugs because that’s what the democrats want.
Yoga and canning beans are both great hobbies. You pick weird things to use as examples of the worst way getting sucked into QAnon could go.
You’d be so surprised! The hobbies are inherently good. But people — specifically, influencers — use them as gateways to the broader movements (so-called wellness and prepping as described above).
Edit: Here is one such piece on the co-opting of yoga.
It’s truly fascinating to watch these people who have been captured by the more intelligent get (to use an overused analogy) herded between ‘fields’ like sheep.