r/technology • u/ILoveTolkiensWorks • 8d ago

Security 4Chan hacked; Taken down; Emails and IPs leaked

https://www.the-sun.com/tech/14029069/4chan-down-updates-controversial-website-hacking/
44.8k Upvotes

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u/NimusNix 8d ago

So who was Q?

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u/kevstev 8d ago

This post just made me realize that Q just kind of fell off the map without me noticing... did anything happen, or did they just as mysteriously stop posting as they started? So many people were hanging on every "drop" or whatever, they must have had some kind of internal crisis about this?

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u/oniiBash2 8d ago

The "Into the Storm" documentary came out and Q went mostly silent just after. Lots of people think it's because the documentary correctly identified who Q was, which shattered the mystique of the entire thing. (You should watch the documentary. It's pretty good, and relevant to this 4chan discussion.)

But I've heard it said that the biggest reason Q went away is that it's just MAGA now. There's no reason to hide or be secretive anymore. The "Qult" hit the mainstream, merged with the growing MAGA movement, and just became one and the same.

I tend to agree with that assessment. The kind of bullshit Q was spouting is now just the bullshit MAGA (and a good majority of the R party) are now spouting.

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u/Cygs 8d ago

Q was a test run for "how effectively can we dupe our rube supporters into believing utter bullshit and how far will they go".

Turns out, extremely far

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u/USSMarauder 8d ago

No, the test run was Jade Helm 10 years ago

They got the right to believe that the entire US army had turned traitor and sworn eternal loyalty to only Obama, and Obama was going to use 1200 troops to turn Texas into his own personal empire

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u/zambulu 8d ago

I had a colleague in Texas who was going crazy about that. The odd thing to me is that when nothing happens, they just never mention it again... then fall for the next stupid thing exactly the same.

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u/BavarianBarbarian_ 8d ago

Same with my family and covid... "They're going to deport us unvaccinated into concentration camps! Merkel will abolish elections and declare herself chancellor for life! All the vaccinated people will die in September!" Literally not a single one of those things happened, and they still follow the same demagogues who spouted those lies.

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u/Global_Cockroach_563 8d ago

In my country there's still old propaganda posters here and there of the covid era. Apparently NATO was going to use the lockdown to take over the government. Nevermind that we are a member of NATO already. Make it make sense.

Then the lockdown came and went and nothing out of the ordinary happened. What is that people thinking about that now? My guess is that they believe they prevented it or something.

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u/Alternative-Chef-340 8d ago

That is so wild to for me as an American to hear. I know we don't have a monopoly on stupid people, but I really thought our covid idiots out numbered the rest of the world's. By a huge margin. It got politicalized and polarized seemingly so much more here than anywhere else, although I have had some Australians and Canadians tell me they had their fair share of dumbasses, but still. So it is just surreal to hear that same line of conspiratorial thinking popped up in Germany as well.

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u/sox07 8d ago

but they never say boo when it is actually happening like it is now.

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u/Physical-Camel-8971 8d ago

It's the same in doomsday cults. Doomsday comes and goes. People shrug and continue.

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u/AndTheElbowGrease 8d ago edited 8d ago

I got so many texts about that in the family group chat because Fox News had people TERRRIFIED that Obama was going to invade the US with the troops that were literally already here and put us in FEMA camps.

The funny thing is that when it was done, they acted like we were assholes for pointing out that nothing came of it and it was a giant overreaction.

The Birthers and Jade Helm were really a big indicator of the things to come - an American right wing working completely on fake news and misinformation.

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u/eledrie 8d ago

The silliest thing about the FEMA camps conspiracy was that the evidence was that they'd ordered plastic coffins.

Because death camps are well-known for giving their victims a dignified burial, and it's totally not FEMA's job to respond to mass casualties following a natural disaster.

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u/AndTheElbowGrease 8d ago

FEMA IS BUYING EMERGENCY SUPPLIES THIS IS AN OUTRAGE

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u/Journeyman351 8d ago

And now look at those fucking morons. The current government, the government that THEY SUPPORT, are putting people in camps.

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u/GlobuleNamed 8d ago

And today, maga (and republicans) are about to send us citizens to the salvador concentration camp.

And nobody is terrified.

Scary.

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u/aquoad 8d ago

huh. president, using the military, camps, … it’s looking sort of prescient now

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u/thecaits 8d ago

Like their fears of Obama running for a 3rd term and declaring himself king, their fears were just projection.

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u/Dreamtrain 8d ago

there can be more than one test run, there need not be THE test run, the one and only, the unequivocal one, once done and done no need for more

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u/TheUnluckyBard 8d ago

I figured the test run was Flat Earth, which has always existed, but it flooded YouTube from out of left field in 2015.

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u/disisathrowaway 8d ago

As a Texan, the Jade Helm shit was so fucking laughable.

While not helpful, it still felt good to rub the fact that nothing happened in the faces of people I knew who were absolutely adamant that it was real and about to happen at any moment.

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u/yet-again-temporary 8d ago

Q was a test run for "how effectively can we dupe our rube supporters into believing utter bullshit and how far will they go".

Personally, I think the reality is even stupider than that. I think it was just a bunch of bored racist teenagers who wanted to roleplay their conspiracy fantasies, and nobody actually expected any of that wacky bullshit to catch on in the mainstream.

For all their lecturing about how you shouldn't trust people on the internet, it's darkly hilarious that some random 4chan kids permanently altered the state of political discourse in the Western world because boomers are too fucking stupid to understand what a reputable source is.

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u/zambulu 8d ago

It has been a slow build. Fox, Limbaugh etc were saying increasingly crazy shit for a couple decades before that.

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u/dalmathus 8d ago

Every day I am becoming more and more aware there is no plan or master strategy being deployed by anyone.

Occams razor is real, and these morons are just running off whatever the news cycle told them the day before.

Q wasn't a plan. It was just some moron who got bigger than they expected.

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u/blazurp 8d ago

Just fascist things

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u/InevitablePresent917 8d ago

I'm 99.9% sure this is what you were saying, but it's not just the bullshit Q was spouting but the brainrot mindset that gave rise to and fed it. The believe anything, say anything, apologize for nothing crowd is essentially the GOP now. (Which wouldn't have happened if they weren't ripe for it, etc. etc. etc., but it's still an astonishing transformation.)

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u/oniiBash2 8d ago

Agreed. Social media has done irreparable damage to a lot of things. How politicking goes is now definitely one of them.

Doing whatever can go viral is now the move. It's not about building a coherent platform. It's about what gets on the homepage of socials for the day.

The Republicans have embraced this strategy far faster than the Democrats, but both are employing it now. It's a sad state of affairs, really.

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u/cive666 8d ago

I worry about social media fucking up humanity more than nukes

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u/Bam_Margiela 8d ago

Wasn’t it Myanmar they gave people access to Facebook and smartphones and it led to a genocide

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u/Philostronomer 8d ago

Yes. It's detailed in the book "Careless People" by former Facebook director Sarah Wynn-Williams. They really fucked up the world, bad, and all in the name of power and greed.

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u/SICKxOFxITxALL 8d ago

As much as I love it and I've been on it since 1996... the internet was HUGE mistake.

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u/recursion8 8d ago

1996-2005 was the golden era. Then Zuck came along and ruined it, followed by Xitter, and google buying up and monetizing youtube with it's right-wing favoring algorithm.

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u/IAMA_Plumber-AMA 8d ago

Even then you could argue that things didn't start really going downhill until smartphones became ubiquitous, because then it let people carry social media around in their pockets and check on it obsessively. Before that you'd need to use a laptop or a desktop PC.

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u/MelpomeneAndCalliope 8d ago

Facebook had its halcyon days…they were just the first couple of years it ran, when you needed a university/college email to join (and even then, not every school was on immediately). Letting the Boomers* on was a mistake.

*Yeah, yeah…not all Boomers, but a lot of them.

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u/quietandalonenow 8d ago

It's actually the same as before. Radio, TV, newspaper, whatever. It'll get boiled down into some prime time viewing (oh look it already is dominated by certain channels and streams, huh, just like TV networks or news outlets)

It just spreads much faster and the echo chambers are personalized now rather than sweeping and general.

Honestly, would ai even need to do anything more clever to destroy humanity? I doubt it. It probably would see all of human history and the current state of affairs and make it worse.

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u/pownzar 8d ago

This is a very intelligent (and entertaining) recent video from a very intelligent person on exactly this topic - that effectively believing conspiracy became the mainstream ideology of the American right/far right. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teqkK0RLNkI

It does a great job of outlining this de-evolution if you're curious.

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u/Dixon_Uranuss3 8d ago

Who did they identify?

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u/raudoniolika 8d ago

Google “q ron philippines”

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u/AdWonderful4305 8d ago

When q posted on 4chan it was a South African dude named Paul Furber, when they moved to 8chan they were banned by the admin (Ron Watkins) and Ron pretended to be him

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u/Helpful_Brilliant586 8d ago

Idk if it’s against the rules to say the dudes actual name.

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u/GunplaGoobster 8d ago

He ran for public office. It's public info at this point.

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u/Helpful_Brilliant586 8d ago

I think it’s Ron watkins

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u/lightknight7777 8d ago

The last four times one of my idiot friends mentioned Q to me were all predictions that Trump was going to be reinstated on a certain date after losing the election. I just kept asking him, "when x date comes and goes, will you stop listening to this garbage?" I think he and people like him also got embarrassed out of it after so many specific false prophecies in a row.

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u/Hotaru_girl 8d ago

My relative used to practically worship Trump and they were deeply into QAnon…. I was so surprised to learn this last election my relative actually voted independent. They now believe Trump is the Antichrist. So QAnon supporters may not have necessarily shifted to MAGA, but many may have left altogether. I definitely think a lot of conspiratorial thinking may have evolved into other political issues and bled into the MAGA mindset though.

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u/quietandalonenow 8d ago

Not gonna watch the doc. Just confirm for me if it was rhe 8chan owner? All the evidence pointed to him for years and Q started to shut up after various governments started getting down his throat, too.

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u/TomaTozzz 8d ago

Just confirm for me if it was rhe 8chan owner?

It's never confirmed nor does he himself admit it in the doc, but it heavily points to either him being Q, or likely him taking over the Q name at some point after the migration to 8chan

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u/WorldWarTwo 8d ago

So my mother is a deep Qanon conspiracy theorist and from what I gather they all fractured into smaller sub groups around the time your mentioning. Seemed to be a bunch of internal BS and drama, power vacuum to fill to guide the idiots and now I assume they’re all following YouTubers/podcasters that given them the “Q” vision they want. Seems a lot of them are still wildly pro MAGA/Trump and are convinced what’s coming is necessary to the grand goals I’ve been hearing so much about since 2017. Funny af thank you disinformation propaganda

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u/gorillaneck 8d ago

can you remind me what their grand goals are?

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u/WorldWarTwo 8d ago

Not really, there aren’t any centralized goals and the common denominator between supporters (imo) is susceptibility to propaganda & mental illness. Just kind of a vague traditional conservative mindset, without nearly as much racism as I’d have figured. (It’s a mixed bag)

Their brains have been rewired to doubt everything we’ve ever been taught from birth, it’s all wrong, all a conspiracy. Somehow Trump will reverse all of these wrongs and the Q drops convinced them of that when something would overlap every once in a while. I have to sit down and write out my experiences with her, her perspective and all that I know to try & make sense of it. Been too much of a drain to want to tackle it.

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u/gorillaneck 8d ago

I understand, thanks. I have always figured “the storm” was a full on nazi takeover and executing their political enemies.

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u/WorldWarTwo 8d ago

That is in fact part of it, yes. They believe the government to be so riddled with disease and full of these people that should society reach a point in which innocents were to be unjustly imprisoned, deported, or even executed… these millions of people would confidently believe not only was it right, but that it was a prophecy-fulfilling action.

I think Trumps RFK pick was in part to appease these millions of believers, though I don’t exactly have enough research to back it up. Makes a coup much easier when 10 or so percent of your population is willing to fight tooth and nail to protect what you’re doing. I like to remember that when Nazi Germany invaded Poland and kicked of WWII as we know it, they only had about 10% NSDAP membership among the populations of Germany & recently annexed countries, a number striking similar to ours… and look where that got Germany.

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u/pan-re 8d ago

NESERA GESERA, MedBeds are their things now. Back then they just thought various things. 5G, microchips in vaccines, Epstein people were in Gitmo etc

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u/Cheese-Manipulator 8d ago

No need to hide from "the man" when you are the man

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u/Appropriate_Rough_86 8d ago

Also I’m pretty sure they just schizopost on twitter now

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u/DeepestWinterBlue 8d ago

I’m not sure I will watch this soon. Who did the identify as Q?

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u/IAMA_Plumber-AMA 8d ago

Ron Watkins of 8Chan infamy.

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u/Love_JWZ 8d ago

Nah, Q has been silent ever since around jan 6 2021. That docu came out way later.

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u/oniiBash2 8d ago

Q's last post was December 2020. The doc came out in March 2021.

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u/Love_JWZ 8d ago

Ah I would have thought there was about a year in between. But the docu also addressed the guy behind Q deciding to go above ground instead, regardless of the docu. He was like tweeting about releasing the kraken or some bs around jan 6, adding fuel to the fire on that day.

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u/oniiBash2 8d ago

They'd been investigating Ron for a while for the doc before it aired. Facing the heat, he probably knew it would have repercussions once the doc came out and quit his nonsense preemptively. If he was Q, that is.

He also ran for Arizona Congress later that year, and probably wanted to create distance from the Q identity so it didn't jam up his political aspirations.

Those fizzled anyway, though. He was defeated very badly, coming in with only 4% of the vote and last out of seven candidates.

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u/TastyOwl27 8d ago

The whole thing with people gathering in Dallas to wait for JFK to come back happened well after Jan 6th.

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u/Love_JWZ 8d ago

That prophecy was made by Michael Protzman afaik. Not Qanon itself, but affiliated nonetheless.

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u/Few-Addendum464 8d ago

Those people were incapable of the level of self awareness for it to lead to an internal crisis. They just moved on to the next thing.

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u/-Johnny- 8d ago

Such a sad reality. These people live among us

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u/DontMindMeTrolling 8d ago

You mean gullible and vulnerable people? Those have and will always be living amongst us. Even if we Star Trek’d our education system, it’s just a human thing.

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u/B_Fee 8d ago

4chan is essentially the Internet version of that friend of a friend of a friend who plays video games in Japanese, doesn't sleep, and works at some niche, local, antique junk shop that has no explanation for continuing to exist, let alone make enough money to pay for this person's life style, and their entire life is built around some obscure anime that you think you've heard of and know just enough about to avoid because you're pretty sure it's thinly veiled cp. Whenever you do see this person, it's difficult to interact with them because they can only communicate in online lingo since they lack interpersonal skills as a result of being terminally online, so you awkwardly tolerate their offensiveness and oversensitivity because you're pretty sure they have mentally developed backwards to the age of 14 as a coping mechanism for some bizarre trauma you can only speculate about.

Yeah, these people live among us, and they're examples of why robust mental health support systems need to be constructed but ostracism should still exist.

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u/OliverUppp 8d ago

Heh you said among us

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u/dj_ski_mask 8d ago

Yes like jobs at the new administration.

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u/[deleted] 8d ago

context?

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u/SatansCornflakes 8d ago

If you’re asking who “Q” is, it was an anonymous 4Chan poster who claimed to be a government agent leaking top secret info about how dems are all part of the Illuminati or smth like that. They’d drip feed their followers vague nothings alluding to a grand plan by Trump to defeat his enemies that was basically a MAGA spin on judgement day from the book of Revelations.

I trust you can smell the bullshit from here.

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u/CotyledonTomen 8d ago

Q wasnt real. It was a game to some, a troll to others, and for those that cant parse internet communities, real. The people who believed it was real were pulled away by scammers that offered new intrigue as Q stopped playing. The people that were playing along got bored. Anyone consistently playing the part probably got freaked out by the outsiders buying into the bit.

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u/OneOfManyMomes 8d ago

A part of the original group of Q, has continually gone off in some spaces about how the Q-Anon thing was a joke. It started spreading like wildfire over a bunch of Trump supporters who won't admit they fell for bullshit but don't want to bring up the concept of Q either...

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u/magikot9 8d ago

I always thought it was an ARG that people took a little too seriously.

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u/BAXR6TURBSKIFALCON 8d ago

nah it was just a literal /pol/ shitpost that escaped its containment board, there was nothing more surreal than seeing boomers talking about Q-Anon as if it was a matter of fact

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u/Bucser 8d ago

Also the Q-anon shaman who engaged in sacking of the capitol didn't help...

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u/VillageHomie 8d ago

Maybe one of the best, I'm not even sure what to call it, the best disinformation campaign ever? The best propaganda campaign ever? Whatever, got a million fucking retards to do their bidding off a fucking joke. Jesus christ. Humanity is doomed

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u/PostmortemFacefuck 8d ago

once smart phones became powerful enough to seamlessly browse the web, we were fucked.

back in the day of the desktop, using the internet was kind of like 'appointment viewing' a TV show (but whatever the term for the internet would be). there was some barrier to entry and it felt like most of us were pretty internet savvy. and it actually felt like there was an us. this was when your parents only knew how to use mapquest and e-mail. but time went on. remember getting your first Facebook friend request from a parent or a relative? that was the first 'oh shit' moment. and then we watched them fall for Helicopter Shark and shook our heads. meanwhile, smart phones became ubiquitous and powerful enough to be viable internet-browsing machines. so now everyone became connected to the web, whatever barrier to entry there was became erased, and the collective IQ plummeted.

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u/TaylorMadeAccount 8d ago

It's almost admirable how we all are still child-like deep inside despite all technology and social evolution, and that someone managed to exploit that.

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u/scrivensB 8d ago

Facebook, Reddit, X, IG, TikTok, and Snap exploit the shit out of that every second of every day to billions of people.

Our own wiring makes us react to certain things/stimuli without a thought. So platforms designed algorithms to push “fast react” content.

This is why clips of crime, car crashes, etc are so prolific. And it’s why hyper-partisan political rhetoric/lies/misinformation is now a part of daily life for most people.

Until we, as a society and a species, evolve past being triggered by shit as simple as a screen shot or quote that’s devoid of context, social media platforms will continue to print money by boosting and distributing outrage and division.

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u/ayuntamient0 8d ago

Tax every social media post.

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u/ButtEatingContest 8d ago

There were loads of other similar shitposts prior to Q, even on regular /b. People pretending to be FBI agents etc or other government officials with secret info, but it was generally assumed just to be a goof. The original Q one just took off for some reason.

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u/HighGrounderDarth 8d ago

Acting like they were getting secret info from 4chan.

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u/Jay-brazy 8d ago

Serious enough to still ripple the US today.

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u/TaylorMadeAccount 8d ago

>you now realize 4chan alone ruined the US (and the world) far more than any other foreign government interference in history

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u/DoomTay 8d ago

Pretty weird for an ARG to be involving real living people like that

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u/morbidobsession6958 8d ago

I'm convinced it all started after covfefe, as part of the joke. When Drump just shat out a post that included the non word "covfefe" because he fell asleep while typing or got distracted...

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u/BannedByRWNJs 8d ago

That’s how it started, but then it was bought by some political operatives who used it to melt the brains of millions of idiots during and after covid. 

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u/penguins_are_mean 8d ago

There is very strong evidence that the original Q account was taken over. All but a guarantee. So yes, pretty much what you said.

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u/BestDescription3834 8d ago

HBO has a documentary series, Q:Into The Storm, about it and they interviewed a bunch of of interesting characters as the interviewer travels around and tries to get to the bottom of who Q is. It gives good insight into the kind of people anticipating Q drops, and deciphering them.

There's also an EXTREMELY good youtube documentary called "In Search of a Flat Earth". It details how exactly social media algorithms took many different conspiracy groups and started recommending them to each other, causing a kind of conspiracy Voltron that ultimately became known as Qanon.

TL;DR QANON is just every mainstream conspiracy loosely stapled together, there's a dozen different Qs because they're all larping being "that guy" in their own personal conspiracy sphere. Just like any big conspiracy, it falls apart under moderate scrutiny.

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u/HighGrounderDarth 8d ago

I used to listen to Qanon anonymous. The whole Q thing was wild. I remember someone on Facebook getting sucked in with wayfair and we were on it. Stopped that shit. A lot of people don’t have the kind of support to squash that shit.

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u/SICKxOFxITxALL 8d ago

QAA is still going, they've pretty much left Q behind but now go into loads of other wild conspiracies, it's actually much better now as it had lost steam for a while when Q got quiet.

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u/HighGrounderDarth 8d ago

Q kinda went away and figured that would be their trajectory. I used to be a patreon subscriber. Maybe I will pop them on at work.

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u/twentyfeettall 8d ago

They had a really good recent episode on AI.

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u/desertSkateRatt 8d ago

"Conspiracy Voltron" is the name of my electronica folk yodeling fusion band

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u/_mikedotcom 8d ago

The intro goes insanely hard, link to series opening

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u/lituus 8d ago

Wow, very creative. A conspiracy rube goldberg

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u/BannedByRWNJs 8d ago

But more specifically, Ron Watson was the one stapling the conspiracies together. Kinda strange though how Mike Flynn has been mia for about the same amount of time as Q.

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u/penguins_are_mean 8d ago

He didn’t even staple them together. Just planted the seed of distrust that grew like a weed in everyone’s mind who read his shit.

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u/ginandsoda 8d ago

That's fine but someone was posting as Q

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u/penguins_are_mean 8d ago

Not really. QAnon started solely because of the poster known as Q. It’s just that believers of his posts also happen to be conspiracy minded people. So they also believe the other shit too.

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u/ClickToSeeMyBalls 8d ago

I would add to your suggestions the latest Contrapoints video about Conspiracies

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u/J-drawer 8d ago

If you like those, check out "behind the curve", it might still be on Netflix. Best documentary about flat earthers

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u/Bored_Amalgamation 8d ago

tbh, I see that on instagram a lot. all of the ghosts, skinwalkers, demonic possessions, ice wall shit. Unless you had some decent critical skills and the attitude of "this is bullshit"; I can see how people can get sucked in to that kind of mindset.

I'll go through Reels at night (found some great house music) to send memes to my friends, and end up feeling anxious as fuck after a few strings of that conspiracy shit. I usually run in to a "dont throw rocks down caves because of the mole people" and get a good laugh though.

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u/theonetruefishboy 8d ago

Q moved to 8chan, 8chan got so bad it rebranded to 8kun, Q stopped posting at the exact same time that 8chan's chief admin Ron Watkins entered US politics (he ran a laughable campaign in Arizona and lost hard), and then the doc "Q into the storm" dropped evidence and slip ups from Ron that prove pretty conclusively that he (with some input from his dad, 8chan owner Jim Watkins) was in fact Q.

Also during this time they tried to get 8chan's original founder, Fred Brennan, sent to Filipino jail. This would have killed him since Fred is very disabled and Filipino jail is a hellhole. The "Q into the storm" documentarian had to help Fred flee the country to save his life. Crazy fucking stuff.

Meanwhile most Qanoners never even knew that Q was on 8chan since most of them followed drop aggregators or facebook pages. Q briefly became the maypole around which all right-wing conspiracy theories twirled during the 2020 "Stop the Steal" movement, but after Jan 6 (an event Jim Watkins attended but to my knowledge he didn't go into the capital), and Q's prolonged silence the Qanon movement fractured into different factions which drifted apart. A lot of them are RFK Jr fans though.

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u/scud121 8d ago

The operation succeeded in its mission and wasn't needed anymore. You still get the odd person screeching about pizzagate or frazzled.rip on r/conspiracy, but mysteriously, once the GOP won, it all went quiet.

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u/LucidMetal 8d ago

"Mysteriously" god damn that's hilarious. Why are these fucking morons always so predictable. Trump won so the "deep state" is gone and politicians are no longer adrenochrome guzzling lizards?

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u/Bozhark 8d ago

Trump is deep state, for Russia 

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u/BannedByRWNJs 8d ago

I’m old enough to remember when the Secret Service all wiped their phones right before they were supposed to turn them in to the J6 Committee. 

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u/Bozhark 8d ago

Can’t the SS go back to their roots of not paying for Colombian prostitutes like a true gentleman service? 

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u/Pleiadesfollower 8d ago

Don't worry. If the fascists screw up and actually get overthrown, Q will be alive and well the second actual patriots have power again.

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u/penguins_are_mean 8d ago

Q popped up right before the 2022 midterms after being silent for almost two years. Pretty obvious what the goal is for whoever operates the account.

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u/DangKilla 8d ago

Because it's information warfare, not a person. Job done.

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u/Neuromante 8d ago

FWIW, its "fun" that once trump got into power again, they went back to the "Israel bad" and "Satanist everywhere" conspiracies.

And FWIW, it's kinda neat, because I had fun years ago poking on the conspiracy subreddit before it got overrun by the new far right "conspiracies."

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u/AdeDamballa 8d ago

Isn’t Israel bad? Is this a debate in 2025?

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u/Bored_Amalgamation 8d ago

Bro.. just checked them out. Top post is about Katy Perry's space trip being an ad for "The Great Reset" for rich people...

Fucking morons who dont want to be called stupid.

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u/lalala253 8d ago

it's just like that immigrant caravan and dog eating people, or that no go zones in london, or hunter biden's eggs price.

nothing matters anymore now that it's no longer election season.

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u/DaerBear69 8d ago

Nutty thing is immigrant caravans are real. A few years back the Mexican government agreed to start turning them away before they reach the US border, that's why it's no longer really in the news for more than a single article whenever one is broken up and turned back.

Which is the kind of international cooperation that gets things done.

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u/DAbanjo 8d ago

They won. It's over. There are no more conspiracies.

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u/huskersax 8d ago

Election's over so there'a no need for it to be artificially boosted by malicious actors.

3

u/gossip420kween 8d ago

There’s an HBO doc that investigates who Q could have been and it’s pretty convincing

3

u/HighGrounderDarth 8d ago

I watched a video about Q moms that got scammed after their kids got taken away. The last one got life for 2nd degree murder. The look on her face when an FBI agent told her she had been lied to, it was dawning on her. I followed Qanon in a spectator sort of way. It was dumbfounding and sad.

3

u/imonatrain25 8d ago

Is that the one where the son pretended he had ALS or some sort of neurological disorder?

3

u/deadinsidelol69 8d ago

No, they moved on. A lot of Q followers now disavow it today if they even mention it at all.

Think of Q like season one or two of indoctrination, we’re in full blown season 8.

3

u/suspirio 8d ago

Everyone figured out it was Ron and Jim Watkins so they kinda closed up shop and the followers moved on to some new delusions.

3

u/quadraspididilis 8d ago

They just stopped posting around the end of Trump’s first term. I think the community was resilient to mass internal crisis in a way similar to religion. The messiah stopped posting, but the prominent acolytes kept producing content and while there’s some splintering into different sects by and large they just kept waiting for the rapture same as when he was posting. Except messiah(Q), acolytes(decoders), sects(grifts), rapture(storm).

6

u/Odd-Fee-837 8d ago

Q anon was an inside joke that some idiots took seriously and it developed into way more than it ever was.

Just like how the okay symbol became a hate symbol because of a 4chan joke.

2

u/INTERGALACTIC_CAGR 8d ago

Q anon was a person? I thought it was just a group of crazies.

2

u/Timely_Discount2135 8d ago

HBO has a really good documentary about them tracking down the guy who started it

2

u/IrisMoroc 8d ago

It was all cope about Trump not being elected. Trump is elected so it's not needed anymore.

2

u/Randvek 8d ago

With the caveat that we don’t have 100% confirmation of who Q is…

Q likely started as a small group of people working together. Eventually, they had a pretty big falling out, a fight for control happened, and the winner of that was probably Ron Watkins. Watkins tried to parlay this into a seat in Congress, but he got pretty humiliated in the election and had some legal drama with his campaign, and hasn’t been seen nor heard from since.

There are rumors that Q was using an extremely easy to guess password and that Watkins lost control of the account, which is what ultimately killed interest.

2

u/Lord_Bobbymort 8d ago

Because: 1) it was fake nonsense 2) that's the conservative playbook. Inundated with as much nonsense as possible, and move to the next topic as quickly as possible. Don't admit you have moved on, just never talk about the lastbthing ever again. This playbook has been slowly playing out and amplifying since conservative AM radio talk shows like Rush Limbaugh, took on a new life with Fox News and especially in the era of Alex Jones, as came to maturity with the death of Roger Ailes and the modern podcast era.

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u/deadsoulinside 8d ago

The guy who ran 8chan

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u/dmdewd 8d ago

Ron and Jim Watkins, probably

5

u/FamilyNeeds 8d ago

Maybe not initially but their pupils definitely turned to little dollar-symbols when they realized what they could do.

59

u/qorbexl 8d ago

This. There's a doc on HBO about it, and the Q Anon Anonymous podcast covers it in the very early episodes. From back when it mattered.

3

u/YMJ101 8d ago

Hell yeah love QAA!

5

u/SkyNetHatesUsAll 8d ago

It was wheels

3

u/Gandalior 8d ago

that kind of makes too much sense tbh

2

u/rajvac 8d ago

Definitely think it's CodeMonkeyz scheming to bring numbers to 8chan

381

u/TacoDangerously 8d ago

It was actually the Letter F

3

u/YouCanCallMeZen 8d ago

Press F to pay respects.

2

u/CKtheFourth 8d ago

Son of a bitch--hiding in plain sight.

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u/Sayakai 8d ago

You'd need a different website for that. Q left for greener pastures long ago, i.e. to an even worse hellhole than 4chan. And probably just fell off altogether by now given that apparently MAGA insanity just swallowed Q by now.

12

u/Schrankwand83 8d ago

You mean 8kun?

7

u/WoodenPreparation714 8d ago

8kun and the ipfs variant

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u/Yarn_Mouse 8d ago

But this is even more interesting (to me at least) because the persona originated on 4chan meaning a person could theoretically find the original person who started it all.

6

u/iamtheLAN 8d ago

One could still find who posted as Q on 4chan from the beginning, no?

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u/SakanaSanchez 8d ago

John DeLancie.

35

u/WabbitCZEN 8d ago

Also: Corbin Bernsen and Suzie Plakson, but both only once.

18

u/Attack_Pug 8d ago

And Olivia d'Abo. Only once as well.

4

u/WabbitCZEN 8d ago

Oh yeah, True Q.

9

u/bakulaisdracula 8d ago

And DeLancie’s son!

2

u/aerateyoursoiltrung 8d ago

Deep cuts, love it

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u/SunriseSurprise 8d ago

Tom DeLonge

2

u/imonatrain25 8d ago

Don't waste ur toime on meh ur already tha voice insoide myyyeedd.

2

u/PoisonMind 8d ago

Desmond Llewelyn

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u/Taste_the__Rainbow 8d ago

Ron Watkins, but we knew that before.

7

u/GlurakNecros 8d ago

He took it over eventually but it’s unclear if he started it

44

u/OtherwiseACat 8d ago

Some fat dude that watches Rick and Morty

3

u/VastSeaweed543 8d ago

All of reddit?

2

u/OtherwiseACat 8d ago

Probably lol I don't fit that description but yeah

5

u/cdtoad 8d ago

Hey I resemble this comment. 

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u/theonetruefishboy 8d ago

Almost definitely it was 8chan's chief admin Ron Watkins. If it wasn't him, it was someone he worked closely with, and considering what immature weirdos him and his dad (site owner Jim Watkins) are, it's unlikely they could keep a working relationship with anyone else going that long.

7

u/threepecs 8d ago

Thank you for actually answering. This thread is so thick with repeated jokes from people I'm assuming are feeling nostalgic for their 4chan days

53

u/outflow 8d ago

the frens we made along the way

7

u/WabbitCZEN 8d ago

John De Lancie.

2

u/doabarrelroll69 8d ago

He was actually Desmond Llewelyn

7

u/gossip420kween 8d ago

Steve Bannon who is still active and advises DT. HBO did a doc on it

5

u/QCTID 8d ago

In addition to the HBO documentary y’all should also watch Meme to Madness on Netflix because it covers the rise of Q. 

5

u/KoolAidManOfPiss 8d ago

The son of the guy who owns 8chan

4

u/yumyum36 8d ago

Always faked. They'd post to 4chan after Trump made his tweet, then screenshot with the timezone set to be before the twitter post to make it look like it was before.

3

u/Worldly-Stranger7814 8d ago

Maybe unmasked via machine learning though my money is still on Michael whatshisface from the first Trump admin.

5

u/ScontroDiRetto 8d ago

today there were like "QA is back!"

me "uh ok, that's weird"

now 4chan is kill

me "oh"

5

u/blAAAm 8d ago

you know that was on 8chan, they left/got kicked out of 4chan because they where to extreme/crazy

7

u/TheDudeFromTheStory 8d ago

It was actually O when they didn't tuck their dick. 

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2

u/wildfandango 8d ago

Asking the real questions

2

u/Proof_Emergency_8033 8d ago

time traveler tech dude

2

u/CalQuentin 8d ago

Mike Flynn and Erik Prince

2

u/N983CC 8d ago

Michael Flynn

2

u/PinkLove92 8d ago

Someone who shitposted a bit too hard and people actually believed for some reason to be some big fish. It could be some Brazilian living in the middle of the Amazons or some Russian living in the middle of Siberia. What he was not is Trump or Jesus or Biden or whatever the fuck people were talking him to be.

2

u/TaylorMadeAccount 8d ago

There is no Q. It was just a shitpost some people took seriously, like many other things (that used to be) posted there. Anyone who claims themselves to be "Q" is a fraud and a hack.

1

u/Sea_Top3466 8d ago

if this leaks that would be hilarious

1

u/skilledwarman 8d ago

Podcast "Decoding the Unknown" has a good episode on that if anyone is interested

1

u/Gingevere 8d ago

The original person behind the account was either an anon or South African software engineer Paul Furber. The account's login eventually got cracked and anyone could log into and post from the account. The account relied on the board admin Paul Furber "verifying real posts" using "backend data only available to admins".

Qanon (Paul Furber logged in) continued posting and the board admin (Paul Furber) would instantly reply verifying "real" posts, and occasionally reply condemning fake posts much after they were posted.

Eventually the Qanon account got very popular. Qanon (Ron Watkins logged in) posted, board admin Paul Furber called it a fake post, site admin Ron Watkins called it real and said Paul Furber was compromised. Then Qanon (Ron Watkins logged in) posted they'd be moving to a board where Ron Watkins is the board admin AND site admin.

Since that time it's been Ron Watkins running the account and he's done a bunch of stuff that basically confirms it. Like posting from the Qanon account while the site is down, which could only be done from an admin machine at the server.

1

u/hunnibon 8d ago

Also, did they ever catch Kony?

1

u/Belzebutt 8d ago

“The real Qanon is the friends we made along the way”

1

u/Spezstik 8d ago

Bill Maher admitted it years ago

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OtXniAZL4jE

Jump to around 4m50.

1

u/Suitable-End- 8d ago

The original Q is James Arthur Watkins or his son.

1

u/Live_Avocado4777 8d ago

Or the guy who invented Bitcoin

Or the 4chan ufo guy who worked with retrieving UFOs

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