Do you have any Qanon believers in your lives?

I have a couple cousins that married into extreme clans. our sort of local hatfield/mccoy types. . . that represent the political extremes of each side on top of religious and superstitious craziness, too... whereas our fam is more the passive don't rock the boat types. Which makes for a complete shitshow for any type of large gathering.

I had two former female employees whom I stayed friends with on Facebook start posting QAnon crap over the past six years on their FB pages and then try to start a 'fight' with me and my other friends on my FB page who dared say that QAnons were crazy. Both women were in their late 40s / early 50s and both of these women had miserable marriages and daddy issues. I quickly dropped both of them as FB friends. didn't need their garbage on my page.

My brother left his wife a year ago because she swan dived into that noxious pool of idiocy. He’s 53, back home living with our 87-year old mother and couldn’t be happier.

Not family but I deal with the public, unfortunately, and I run into quite a few of them. I suspect some of them are in militias too. I had one inform when I first started the job that he "liked "jimmy" (retired colleague) until he found out he was a commie who voted for biden". Jimmy was a Navy veteran. All of this was said while staring at me intently trying to read my reaction. I smiled politely and continued the paperwork. Since then he avoids coming in unless he absolutely has to and seems to be getting more isolationist and paranoid.

A couple of (now) estranged relatives are in deep with Q and conspiracy theories, in general. I have a few ULTRAMAGAts on my socials with whom I attended high school, who are also straight up, cracked out Qanonners.

I do not engage with any of them. I can't provide the kind of mental help they so obviously need nor would they be willing to accept it, if I was. I'm just waiting for them to implode, pretty much.

Isn't it time that someone — I dunno, some three-letter agency or just a counter-conspiracy-theorist — infiltrate these groups and show them how easy it would be to prove their point(s) by drinking a batch of kool-aid? I don't mean to be harsh or as bad as they are, but we've all seen the stories of how difficult it is to deprogram these cult members. And at the end of the day, what will we have lost if several hundred thousand or even a million people are gone? It's not like these people are our best and brightest, or even add anything of value to our country and culture. On the contrary; they're doing so much damage that we're nearing a tipping point and the result might actually cost the lives of people who haven't fallen for the bullshit conspiracy theories, undo hundreds of years of progress, and destroy what's left of this once-great nation.

r6 such agencies are more apt to push them to even greater extremes as a means of entrapment, as history shows us, and leave the core with the radicalized beliefs while only arresting a few now turned martyrs.

the more effective tool is mockery rather than angry reactions.

but if you want to view the realm of crazy then seek out godlikeproductions.... neither truly left or right, but with a mass influx of qanon most have been seemingly radicalized to the rightwing.,

The ones I know all seem to have "underlying conditions". Narcissism, drug addictions, past sexual abuse, paranoid personalities, or a delightful combination of all of that. They were always a little off, but with Qanon, they're barely functional.

r8 exactly, even those opposed to qanon in theory, you have the 'activists' that believe the same type of conspiracy.. crazy attracts crazy. It's like visiting any state capital and meeting the 24/7 street activists - the mostly harmless conspiracy nutty 'activists' that are homeless or living on disability in one of the downtown SROs.

An acquaintance who I have a business relationship with is a Joe Rogan follower. I don't think he is full blown Qanon but he hates Joe Biden and acts indifferent to Trump. Definitely voted for Trump in 2020 because Joe Biden was "creepy" and "deranged." Needless to say I avoid talking politics with him and secretly think he's a moron.

No. I try to keep the assholes to a minimum.

Better to have silence than that kind of noise.

r10 is it more because his radicalism or his difference of opinion? It's what the left needs to be concerned with. Many felt they were pushed to the right because they didn't agree with the surrounding hysterics in 2015/2016, having protested the same in 2008 and 2012 from the right and so on, so on. but today, it's justified that at least it's not as bad the right...such justifications only formets this kind of stupidity on the right.

But maybe it is too late... the republications seem driven to to making their delusional great reset happen one way or another. So, what will the new government look like when inevitably republicans are removed from the picture after they attempt a civil war?

Not Q-level insanity, no, but my entire family except me and my parents are garden-variety MAGAts. Even my parents voted for Trump the first go-round.

My brother is an adherent. He visits Sundays to do laundry. Nothing from my news sources is ever accurate, while he buzzes about banished media as a badge of veracity. We settle on the Hallmark Channel (upstanding white communities) and I serve supper.

[quote]OP: I'd die if one of close friends or family members fell for this bullshit

Perhaps, perhaps not. If you get a chance to test your conviction, please let us know the results before you expire.

R14 Your brother never heard of a laundromat?

Make him bring you a roll of quarters!

A wealthy, formerly pink pussy hat friend started talking about Bill Gates and tracking devices in vaccines, Hollywood pedo rings and now uses anti-Ukraine, Russian talking points like proxy war and “the Ujranian Azoff battalion are Nazis”. There have been articles about how Russia infiltrated nat health, yoga moms like her. She was already antivax & anti GMO for years are was not using her head about weird non mainstream news sources that spelt Hillary wrong.

^Ukranian

My gay libertarian friend has gone full Q. He was always on about free markets and small government, and got in trouble not paying taxes for several years. It was always about how logical and rational his views. Along came Trump and he resisted then jumped aboard the crazy train. Full anti-vax Jewish space lasers now. He dressed as Q Shaman for Halloween last year, and not in an ironic way.

Charles T. Moran, head of the Log Cabin Republicans, went from modest and moderate to full-on Trump-sucking conspiracy troll in just a few years.

Has anyone on DL had him?

R14 = doormat. You let your MAGAt brother do laundry at your house, spew his dumb misinformation, and dictate what you watch, then you "serve supper" to him?? WTF is wrong with you?

I lost one of my best friends from college to it. She was always a weirdo but not in a bad way - a hippie dippy type. It started with the vaccine stuff, which seems to have gotten so many of them. But within the span of a few months of the pandemic's start she was suddenly spouting homophobic bullshit on Facebook and I cut her off and haven't talked to her since.

I assumed r14 lives with his parents, r21.

My beloved older sister moved in to my house when my mother died. I was 14. I refused to live with my father, so he sued us both for custody. I won, so I stayed in my house and she became my legal guardian until I went to college. She had it rough. She was physically and sexually abused by her husband for 22 years before leaving him. Her son died of AIDS at 26. She was stalked and harassed by her husband for 25 years. We kept in touch and connected with each other’s outsider’s identity. She was always into harmless, kooky stuff like past-life theories and guiding spirits. I just figured she’d been through so much, she’s allowed to deal with grief and pain in her own way. I’d trust her with my life.

Then she stopped talking to me. I couldn’t reach her for two and a half years. I don’t know where she lives. In 2021 I decided try again to call her on her birthday and she answered (!?). It was a normal conversation until I mentioned Disneyland. She had a fit. She went into this tirade about how Walt was a pedophile and everyone working at Disney were evil child molesters. They kidnapped children via a trap door inside the Haunted Mansion ride to be trafficked in global child sex ring. I had questions because this doesn’t make a lick of sense, but I didn’t know where to start and I was getting scared. She continued. She began to say how great Trump was and that he personally saved Princess Diana in the tunnel, married her, had a child (Barron) with her, and she’s really Melania in a mask. Trump also supposedly saved Michael Jackson from assassination by the Illuminati (so MJ is still alive). Elvis is still alive, “Of course he’s in his 80s now. We’re not stupid!”. And JFK, Jr. is alive. I was speechless. You can’t argue or use logic against this level of delusion. I was almost in tears during this conversation. I am heartbroken. I don’t know who this person is, and worst of all, I can’t trust her. We haven’t spoken since then. My birthday is next week. I doubt I’ll hear from her. I’m almost scared to.

That's genuine mental illness R24.

Yeah, r20 it's not like I ever thought LCR was a great organization, but they did occasionally give a shit about gay rights, nationally and within the Republican Party. They seem to have abandoned any interest in gay rights altogether They might as well just make Don Jr. the next LCR president. At least they'd have a steady supply for the cocaine orgies.

R24, I'm so sorry. There's a reddit called Qanon Causalities that can give you some coping methods, but it seems like the only way to break someone of it is to get all computers and phones out of their grip

R27 She also believes Biden is really Jim Carey in a mask. She’s 74, I’ll be 60 in a week. I don’t see how she’s ever going to change at this age. And I don’t have the patience for QAnon irrationality.

Senility R28?

R29 Probably just cunt-dom. Don't blame medical conditions for people just being assholes.

[quote]The ones I know all seem to have "underlying conditions". Narcissism, drug addictions, past sexual abuse, paranoid personalities, or a delightful combination of all of that. They were always a little off, but with Qanon, they're barely functional.

R8 has accurately described nearly every QAnon cultist I know. They're often isolated and lonely because their combativeness drives everyone away.

R21 you're a single child or you hate your siblings. If you like your siblings then it's pretty hard to write them off. My brother thinks the Senate is a good thing because people who live in rural areas are morally superior to people who live in cities. He was born and raised in the Seattle area and self-identified as a yuppie a few years ago. Now he drives a truck and fancies himself a salt of the earth working man or some shit. Needless to say he's a huge idiot. I still love him and we're going to see John Wick 4 this month.

Somebody I know from work started getting QAnon emails from her brother and bought into it.

Over several decades this lady had built a reputation as a leading expert in the US for her field. Publications, speaker, State appointment, international awards that DLers would murder for, etc.

It only took a couple of months of her spreading this shit for her business reputation to completely evaporate, and is now a pathetic laughingstock.

R33, they like it that way. They want to be victims so badly. Oh and add hypochondriacs to the list of Qanon patterns. It really took off with the treat your chemical sensitivities with colloidal silver/organic produce/lets stick things up our ass and on our feet to get the toxins out crowd. I'm shocked that they didn't take covid seriously. One of my customers thinks her long covid symptoms are due to the vaccinated off gassing chemicals or some shit. She's also as wide as she is tall and I was shocked she didn't die of covid. She was in the hospital a long fucking time

R32, where did I say to write him off? R14 is making him dinner and letting him do laundry. That's a ridiculous level of servility for someone who treats you like shit while spouting conspiracy nonsense.

We had an electrician who brings up the subject! If you don't look interested in discussing it, he just plows ahead anyway. Who does that? We liked him but we can't use him. I hate having to find someone new.

My husband JUST go back from his haircut and the hairdresser brought it up because he innocuously said, "You probably don't have to dry it because the rain is just about to get here" and he said she started with weather control and chemtrails and spiraled into the New Palestine train crash being a false flag so that the government could take over farmland to create super prisons and windfarms and starve us all into submission. I asked him why he didn't try to talk some sense into her he said "She had a scissors at my head and didn't seem well". It's a great haircut so that's a shame.

Sadly, my hairdresser

My brother

Where does one find sites for these nut jobs? Do they hold weekly news conferences?

My darling niece got sucked down the QAnon rabbit hole and lost everything. It started the summer of 2020. She lived on social media and it was always about presenting the perfect family in their matching Vineyard Vines outfits. Her posts started taking a turn, focused on conspiracies, and pedophile rings, sex trafficking. Her marriage started to fall apart and she was becoming delusional.

At some point late summer/early fall, she had an affair with a crazy, dark web type MAGAT she met in some crazy forum, lied about going to visit her father, and met up with him in another state for almost a week. When her husband found out, he moved out for a bit and was completely wrecked by the affair and what was happening.

I stopped by their house to drop off gifts for her and the kids before Christmas (called first and she knew I was coming). The house looked like a bomb went off. Dirty dishes, piles of laundry heaped on the kitchen floor, etc. The kids were still in pajamas at 2:00 and said they were starving. There was very little food in the house, and she could barely acknowledge that I was there. I asked her if she was sick and she said just tired, and went back to lay on the couch. I told the kids to get dressed, I was taking them out to get some lunch and go see the Christmas display at the local farm store (she didn't even have a Christmas tree up, this is the same woman who chronicled the Elf of a Shelf hijinx every year on social media). When I went upstairs with the kids, there were no sheets on the girls' beds, just their comforter. I asked where the sheets were and the older one said "Mommy made us wake up early so she could wash them." And I asked if that happened this morning. She said "no, it was when we had the snow day" which about 5 days earlier, so they were sleeping on bare mattresses. When I had the kids in the car to go to lunch, the oldest, a boy who was 13 at the time said "I think we should tell Dad that Mom can't take care of us." He'd been trying so hard to protect his mom. Then he started crying. I told him we'd get help and that I was going to call his grandparents. Once we were settled in at McDonalds I texted my brother and SIL and told them they needed to stage some sort of intervention, that their daughter was having a full blown breakdown and can't care for the kids. They knew a little about what was going on but live 2 hours away and hadn't been to the house in a while and had no idea of the extent she had spiraled in just a few weeks.

After weeks of drama and heartache, she ended up in a psych ward and then moved in with her parents. Her husband returned to the family home (since sold for something smaller and cheaper) and has sole custody of the kids. She was granted supervised visitation which now allows overnights as long as grandparents or ex-husband are present. She has since been diagnosed with a multitude of psychiatric problems including BPD and disassociative disorder, that were probably always there but manageable. Something about stress just triggered everything all at once. Her "perfect mom" facade was never real, even though her kids only knew her as the all-organic, healthy food, fun yoga mom. It's been absolutely heartbreaking. I give her ex-husband a tremendous amount of credit for stepping up and not making things worse. He is devastated. He's doing his best with the kids. Other extended family members and I try to help as much as we can and again, to his credit, he allows us to when he could simply cut us off.

I ended up adopting the dog, which she impulsively got at the start of lockdown in 2020. The kids come and visit the dog and he is always happy to see them but I don't think he misses that chaotic, messy life at all.

Wow, R41. That’s a heartbreaking story.

That is very sad r41. Obviously a lot more going on with her than just QAnon shit, but it sucks that QAnon is always sitting there, ready and eager to take in all the crazies and make them worse.

[quote]Do you have any Qanon believers in your lives?

No, and hopefully none in my death either.

[quote] I'd die if one of close friends or family members fell for this bullshit

I'll just die if I don't get this recipe!

No, but I don't hang out with idiots.

If you received Cs or worse on research papers in school, perhaps you shouldn’t rely upon your own research.

No, OP, I would never allow Qanan "believers" into my house or into my life.

I have a zero tolerance for Quanon policy.

I have a cousin who is QAnon anti-vaxxer. He lives several states away and the last time I saw him was in 2014. But, he has believed bat shit crazy stuff for a long time like Apple product profits being used to fund Satanic churches, celebrities being in the Illuminati. It wasn't a surprise when I noticed he was posting QAnon crap on Facebook. One of his adult kids has cut off contact with him and refuses to let her kids be around him.

A woman who was a friend of my sister throughout childhood and high school fell into QAnon crap. It was sad because she was very kind to my family after my brother died many years ago. She seemed to fall into QAnon stuff around the spring of 2020 and was posting covid hoax stuff as well on Facebook. Around that time she was going through a custody battle with her ex. Right before the election her Facebook was deleted and far as I know she hasn't returned to FB. My sister and another friend think that she deleted her FB because of the custody battle and that maybe the ex threatened to use the bat shit crazy beliefs against her. Last summer I ran into her at a movie theater. She seemed ok and didn't get chat with her too long. I hope she ditched the QAnon beliefs.

The other QAnon believers I know are/were acquaintances from past jobs and other professional networks. One was a guy who was a supervisor at an engineering internship I did during college. He was a pretty smart guy and I kept in touch with him via text and social media for years. About ten years ago he remarried in late 40s. He and his second wife adopted two brothers from foster care. They also had kids from previous marriage. He was heavy into QAnon and anti-vaxxer beliefs. One of his adopted sons caught covid at school and everyone in the household got it. My former supervisor who was in late 50s died of it. That happened in October 2021. I sort of feel bad for his wife because she frequently posts on Facebook about how difficult it is raising the two boys on her own especially since they were in foster care prior to adoption. But, the wife is still QAnon believe and anti-vaxxer. She'll post something that is heartbreaking and then post some bat shit crazy meme which kills the sympathy I had for her. I still feel sorry for the two boys though.

The other QAnon nut is a former co-worker. She was always conservative, but was pleasant to be around. Once Trump got into office, she started posting a lot of racist and later QAnon crap on social media. Sometime in mid 2021, her Facebook profile was deleted and from talking with other former co-workers she seems to have ghosted them as well. She has two college aged kids, but both of her kids are quite liberal based on their Facebook posts. They never mention her or post pictures of her on FB and I have wondered if there is estrangement.

I'm so sorry to hear about your sister, R41. It's good the kids have you, her ex, and your other family members.

I have an ex co worker who I have kept in touch with and we continue to exchange text every so often. We discussed mostly poltical stuff, he is not full blown Q anon as yet, but I sense it's coming with the constant Elon Musk/ anti Biden articles he sends

Yes, my much younger brother. He's a young, white, blue-collar worker. He's stopped talking about it so much since his girlfriend started making him go to church with her. Within 6 months of starting church, he's now baptized. Instead of Hillary and pizza gate, he rants about people turning away from Jesus. I'm not sure which is worse.

Many truths in those posts.

I know people who believe that Bill Gates put chips in the water which caused the earthquakes in Turkey via some kind of remote. It's been on a Russia founded telegram channel, so it must be true. Does this one count?

I live around tons of Trump lovers and have never met a Qanon believer myself, oddly. Maybe it's because I only have 10 Facebook friends and a rep for mouthing off to people I find stupid though.

My hairdresser believes the government put special things in the Covid vaccine to kill people. She believes Trump is the like the second coming of Christ, ( not kidding you) she believes the Bible predicted Trump 's rise . Trump was sent by God to show us how the world works. She twists every news to suit her own idea of how the world operates. What makes this so disturbing, she is a black woman

Are all of you talking about hair dressers the same person, or different people who go to the same hair dresser? Or is the beauty industry overrun with Qanoners???

I can't believe I'm on a gay website and everyone is talking about going to straight female right wing nut job hair dressers. Move the fuck out of the sticks and find somewhere where actual gay people live and work without shame.

Amen, r58.

The woman who owns the Pilates studio I go to is a believer, she keeps designing t-shirts to sell that incorporate Q-anon designs. Thankfully, people don’t seem to buy them. A friend of mine says it’s more prevalent than you’d think in the yoga world too.

Wow, I thought after so many failed "prophesies", like those trafficked child sex slaves to be freed from all the underground tunnels (many were said to be in Central Park) never came to pass, they would have sobered up, or at least come up for air.

Thank you all for sharing these stories, and my heart goes out to everyone who has lost friends and family to Q.

[quote] A friend of mine says it’s more prevalent than you’d think in the yoga world too.

A family friend's step-daughter who teaches yoga as a side gig is into QAnon.

A lot of yoga/vegan types are as batshit as religious types. Two sides of the same coin.

The QAnon follower who attacked Paul Pelosi looks like the typical hippie vegan guy you would see hanging around a farmer's market.

I have a friend who lives in the same county in Michigan where that QAnoner killed his wife last fall. She said she wasn't shocked at all that something like that happened because she has seen QAnon bumper stickers and lawn signs for the past several years.

I don't understand you, R16, and I am not the person you're replying to here. Why wouldn't you let family use your laundry facilities and have a visit without charging? You remind me of my brother, who is a MAGAT.

Canadian and I know a lot of people who’ve fallen down the Q rabbit hole and dragged Trudeau and our government into it. It really is a disease.

R61, conspiracy theorists don't ever have to get confirmation (or never direct confirmation) of their theories. They don't need it. They always have hundreds of of, going on at once, that they're convinced are secretly happening and only they and a select group/few know about. They go from idea to idea, building up their paranoia and persecution complexes, telling themselves (and everyone else!) how smart they are for uncovering it all and how we'll all see one day!

They're loons and horrible people.

This has been coming for decades and it’s gonna get ugly

Mike Rotschild who wrote the book The Storm Is Upon Us said in some podcast recently that he thinks the QAnoners will get worse.

One of my neighbors had an InfoWars bumper sticker on her big ass truck. I thought that spoke volumes about the depths of her insanity as that is not a common bump sticker. She died of COVID last year age 56.

When I was selling/buying house two years ago more than one realtor brought up the election had been "stolen". There is an assumption if you live in certain areas that you are one of them. When they assume wrong like they did with me, they lose business.