A QAnon 'Digital Soldier' Marches On, Undeterred by Theory's Unraveling

[Nevilledog]

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Lauren Camera
@laurenonthehill
A very personal thread about this story and why I increasingly believe addressing the rot caused by QAnon will be one of the Biden administration’s most important and most difficult tasks.
Valerie Gilbert posts dozens of times a day on Facebook to promote QAnon from her Manhattan apartment.
A QAnon ‘Digital Soldier’ Marches On, Undeterred by Theory’s Unraveling
Valerie Gilbert posts dozens of times a day in support of an unhinged conspiracy theory. The story of this “meme queen” hints at how hard it will be to bring people like her back to reality.
nytimes.com
12:22 PM · Jan 17, 2021

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/17/technology/qanon-meme-queen.html

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https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1350886219262132227.html


A very personal thread about this story and why I increasingly believe addressing the rot caused by QAnon will be one of the Biden administration’s most important and most difficult tasks.

There are thousands of meme queens across the country. Let me introduce you to another one – my former best friend.

We grew up together, were inseparable throughout high school, drove to school together every morning, went on vacations with each other’s families. Sometimes i went to church with her family and sometimes she came to church with mine. We were in each other’s weddings.

She graduated from a good college and went into finance. She didn’t like it much. She moved to California with her husband, went to nursing school and became a delivery nurse. She loved it.

She had a baby, and then had two more. But she had a difficult time finding reliable childcare, and not being near any family, she found it increasingly impossible to juggle work and children.

She left her job and began selling women’s clothing through LulaRoe – one of those pyramid scheme-like companies that’s very good at duping SAHMs into opening their own online boutique.

As often happens with childhood friends, we drifted apart. This happened increasingly quickly after she moved to California. But as is also the case with childhood best friends, we stayed in touch via text, especially for birthdays and at holidays.

She has never been active politically, but the 2016 election stirred something in her. She proudly posted that she was part of the “Never Clinton” cabal. But she never posted about being pro-Trump. In fact, I don’t think she liked him much at the time, or even voted for him.

It happened very slowly at first. The Facebook and Instagram posts were only semi-offensive and far and few between. I had the privilege of being able to shrug it off. Besides, I had a lot going on too – a new baby and demanding job, thousands of miles away.

But then came the pizzagate posts, the posts about the Clintons, Obamas, Gates and others running a pedophile ring, eating babies. Lots of pro-life posts and warnings about child trafficking.

Whatever was happening to her intensified dramatically in March and April of 2019, around the time that the coronavirus shuttered schools and businesses across the U.S.

The posts became angry, racist and more and more bizarre. Photos “proving” Michelle Obama is a man, explainers about Bill Gates trying to change our DNA through vaccinations, full on COVID-19 denial.

Suddenly she was professing to be a patriot fighting for our country, began worshiping President Trump and reposting memes disparaging Joe Biden, his family and other Democrats. What threw me off the most was just how angry and mean she was being.

I’ve always tried to maintain a firewall between my career as a reporter and the politics of family and friends. That’s something I’m actively reassessing after what’s transpired these last 10 months.

I flagged almost everything she posted to Instagram as false through the site’s reporting system, but never confronted her personally. Her account was temporarily frozen a handful of times, so I know others were reporting her too.

She always came back, meaner, angrier and more sure that she was on the right side of history.

Things came to a head for me personally on Friday, when she posted memes supporting the rioters and the insurrection, posted images of a militarized Washington, DC, and made references to future, imminent attacks.

I messaged her that what she was posting was disgusting and dangerous, that this city is my family’s home and that the person I knew her to be was better than this.

I wasn’t expecting an apology or a change in heart. I didn’t have any grand illusions of rekindling a friendship and driving off into the sunset for a girls weekend.

But I certainly wasn’t expecting the wrath of hate the spewed my way within three seconds of messaging her.

“Just you wait,” she fired back. “I know exactly what’s happening. Sad you don’t.”

“And don’t for one second say you know [me],” she wrote. “I tried to keep you but there was just nothing left between us. I’m sorry you have no idea what’s happening but your precious Biden will be behind bars.”

“Did you know the inauguration is canceled? Did you know the insurrection act was signed 1/9? Do you know how many assassination attempts have been made on OUR president in the last 4 years? Do you know that the riots were planned by BLM AND ANTIFA?”

“Did you know that the election was stolen by the Vatican and 5 other huge key players?”

“You think your [SIC] a journalist but you are just as brainwashed as the people watching MSM.”

“STAY HOME. DONT GO TO WORK. KEEP YOUR KIDS HOME. YOUR CITY IS GOING TO BE A WARZONE.”

There’s more, but you get the idea. I didn’t argue. I knew immediately how far gone she was. I wrote, “I love you,” and then she blocked me on all social media.

If you’re reading this and you think you don’t have friends and family this is happening to, I promise you’re wrong. Check in with the people you love, make sure they’re doing ok.

I also want to thank reporters like @BrandyZadrozny @oneunderscore__ and others, whose meticulous reporting on the dark corners of the Internet is something everyone should have been giving much more attention.

I don’t know how the Biden administration solves this. I really don’t. I don’t know if they can. Is it even their problem to solve? But hope is a thing with feathers that perches in the soul, and I will always hope to get my friend back.

[ProfessorGAC]

1. I Fear That One Is Irretrievably Lost

An educated woman, too!

[Laffy Kat]

4. An ex-friend of mine has a undergrad in physics from Cornell,,,,

A J.D. and another undergrad in biology and got caught up in all the conspiracy theories years ago. It started while she was listening to Alex Jones. She does have a history of some underlying mental health problems and was vulnerable, I'm sure. Still, she went from a logical progressive to a raving RWNJ. We even tried an intervention without success. I had to let her go, so to speak. I really miss her but she was not the same person. In a way, it feels like the person I once knew passed away.

[ProfessorGAC]

5. Sounds Like You Lost That Friend...

...before you actually lost her.
You were friends with someone who no longer existed.
Not as dramatic, but my wife & I had a similar experience.

[Laffy Kat]

8. True. nt

[lindysalsagal]

2. Good read. Thanks.

[Arne]

3. This is one of my worst of all posts,

Electroshock.
It is literally meant to shock you out of a delusion.

[CaptainTruth]

6. The result of effective right-wing messaging with absolutely zero counter-messaging.

It doesn't matter if you're selling cars, razors, or crazy conspiracy theories, the fundamental principles of marketing apply.

If we don't realize that & address it, it will only get worse.

[doubleplusgood]

14. +1000 nt

[hauckeye]

7. Pathetic and scary at the same time

[OAITW r.2.0]

9. It's a group enforced mental illness. GEMI for short.

[underpants]

11. It's the same old wheel - cult. Surround with love, cut off contacts, create a new reality/truths

The text below is the best summary I’ve seen of this. It’s the same as any other cult. Put out the love love love net and wayward fish I’ll find it. Cut off their previous world. Everything before has been a lie, only WE (usually one leader) has the actual truth. The fish helps put out the love net for others to find.

What attracts Ms. Gilbert and many other people to QAnon isn’t just the content of the conspiracy theory itself. It’s the community and sense of mission it provides. New QAnon believers are invited to chat rooms and group texts, and their posts are showered with likes and retweets. They make friends, and are told that they are not lonely Facebook addicts squinting at zoomed-in paparazzi photos, but patriots gathering “intel” for a righteous revolution.

This social element also means that QAnon followers aren’t likely to be persuaded out of their beliefs with logic and reason alone.

“These people aren’t drooling, mind-controlled cultists,” Mr. Rothschild said. “People who are in Q like it. They like being part of it. You can’t debunk and fact-check your way out of this, because these people don’t want to leave.”

[underpants]

10. 👀🔴

Marking so I don’t lose this. Looks very interesting

[mzmolly]

12. The origins need to be addressed and "Q" needs to be outed and charged

with election interference, at the very least.

[Roland99]

13. Psychiatrists will be busy for years to come

[Klaralven]

15. The evolution of Valerie Gilbert from the NY Times article

Over a series of conversations, I learned that she had a longstanding suspicion of elites dating back to her Harvard days, when she felt out of place among people she considered snobby rich kids. As an adult, she joined the anti-establishment left, advocating animal rights and supporting the Standing Rock oil pipeline protests. She admired the hacktivist group Anonymous, and looked up to whistle-blowers like Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. She was a registered Democrat for most of her life, but she voted for Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, in the 2016 presidential election after deciding that both major parties were corrupt.

Ms. Gilbert’s path to QAnon began in 2016 when WikiLeaks posted a trove of hacked emails from the Clinton campaign. Shortly after, she started seeing posts on social media about something called #Pizzagate. She had dabbled in conspiracy theories before, but Pizzagate — which falsely posited that powerful Democrats were running a child sex-trafficking ring out of a Washington pizza parlor, and that all of this was detailed in code in the Clinton emails — blew her mind. If it was true, she thought, it would connect all of her suspicions about elites, and explain the horrible truths they had been covering up.

“The world opened up in Technicolor for me,” she said. “It was like the Matrix — everything just started to download.”

Pizzagate primed Ms. Gilbert for QAnon, which she discovered through the YouTube videos of a British psychic. It quickly took over her life, and yanked her politics sharply to the right. Seemingly overnight, her Facebook feed switched from Change.org petitions and cute animal photos to Gateway Pundit links and “Killary Clinton” memes.

Like many QAnon die-hards, Ms. Gilbert has a purely virtual attachment to the movement. She said she had never attended a QAnon rally, or even met another QAnon believer in person. She works from home as a freelance audiobook narrator, rarely leaves her apartment and scoffed when I asked if she would ever take up arms for Q.

“I am a digital soldier,” she said. “I work through the computer.”

[Johnny2X2X]

16. The conspiracy never has to be right

There's never an aha moment for them. The conspiracy theory is ever evolving and never has to be right about anything. Dates come and go and nothing happens and the conspiracy doesn't lose one follower. It's all part of the plan, someone misread the code, or it actually happened and you just have to look for the signs.