Ben Collins: I kept in touch with some QAnon supporters through DMs...

[Nevilledog]

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Ben Collins
@oneunderscore__
Over the last few years, I kept in touch with some QAnon supporters through DMs, checking in on them to see if they'd ever come out of it when their next doomsday came and went.

They'd typically first message me calling me a Satanic pedophile. I'd ignore it and ask questions.
12:39 PM · Jan 17, 2021

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Over the last few years, I kept in touch with some QAnon supporters through DMs, checking in on them to see if they'd ever come out of it when their next doomsday came and went.

They'd typically first message me calling me a Satanic pedophile. I'd ignore it and ask questions.

Usually they would draw hard lines. A big one was D5, which everyone thought would be mass arrests on December 5th two years ago. Didn't happen, didn't matter.

It's about belief, anticipation, an advent calendar. One day soon, their problems would be fixed.

I would check in the week after the failed doomsdays. They'd point to a Q post like scripture, and say some ridiculous event proved it was still happening. An earthquake somewhere, a service interruption on GMail.

I learned something: these people don't want to be humiliated.

So many Q people have staked their entire identities on this. There are no real-life happy endings with QAnon, especially true believers. Just constant embarrassment and almost surgical extrication from friends or family.

So they retreat back to Q forums and pray for executions.

There are a lot of QAnon influencers saying the 20th is their last stand, that if Biden is inaugurated they'll admit they've been conned. But they won't. They'll equivocate and buck-pass. They'll find secret patterns in his speech and say he was secretly arrested. It'll continue.

QAnon is a deeply pathetic and embarrassing thing to believe. For believers, there is safety from that embarrassment in increasingly volatile and toxic online communities. Getting people out of it safely is going to be very hard, but important.

I'd reach back out to some of those Q people, but they're banned from this site now.

They grew to like me. I wasn't a Satanic, blood-drinking pedophile, but I was covering for them, they thought, and they wanted to save me.

Because, remember, they think they're the good guys.

[ret5hd]

1. "There are no real-life happy endings with QAnon..."

"Just constant embarrassment..."

Yep, just like I like it. The sweet sweet taste of giving a good dope-slap.

[coeur_de_lion]

2. I lost a 15 year friendship to this insanity

Called her out about insane conspiracy theories on Facebook, got blocked. About a year later she sold everything and moved to a Q-Anon commune in Kentucky.

Occasionally I take a look at her Twitter posts.

Here is a typical one:

THE FINAL COUNTDOWN
231
123 HERE WE GO
Mirror
Marker

Video is Alex Jones . . .

She copies the FBI, CIA, NSA, Melania Trump, Brad Parscale, US Marines, US Air Force, US Navy, Rob Lowe, Mark Hamill, Chris Pratt and Mark Ruffalo.

Her mind is gone.

[samnsara]

6. if she ever mentions she was at the riots you wont feel bad about letting th FBI know..

..they may, in an odd way, safe her life.

[coeur_de_lion]

7. If I knew she was there I would definitely notify them

I don't know that though.

[samnsara]

3. i could easily..and gladly...walk away from any friend or family spewing this crazy shit..

[Quixote1818]

4. Maybe free psychological help should be available in the new budget?

[IsItJustMe]

5. Probably not. It would take years of intensive psychological therapy to solve this kind of crazy.

Or a lifetime supply of thorazine.