Comment on Q anon was a psyop.
FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website 1 month ago
Psy op implies an amount of planning and the involvement of the military or the intelligence community. I think it is better attributed to chance that the cryptic pretentious musings of one person snowballed into a cultish internet movement. Because it garnered strength online, the musing person at the heart of it probably changed due to tiny power struggles.
People like to know there is a plan for everything. People always suspect a secret cabal behind everything. People are also dumb and impressionable. It doesn’t take a general or CIA buffin to try to target the Venn diagram of those three groups. I think it had the results you describe, it contributed to what we see in the US today: a weakening of the rule of law and a slide into fascism.
Calling QAnon psy op is giving what basically started as a 4chan meme too much credit. If no one took a gun to find a nonexistent basement in a DC pizza restaurant, society at large may have never discovered this snowballed cult, and jumped on it like a cat does catnip, enlarging its reach. The secret “cabal” behind it is maybe a handful of people. Bored and slightly Machiavellian internet users with odd political views and/or the love of endorphin-inducing likes and reach. Never attribute to conspiracy what you can more likely attribute to stupidity. QAnon is stupid. Stupidity with disastrous cobsequences. But not a planned psy op campaign.
peteyestee@feddit.org 1 month ago
I think that’s part of the psyop though. Creating situations that no matter what always look crazy. It’s just the way it is and it’s impossible to tell because the people that may have experienced it look crazy on purpose.
So it’s like I know what your saying… And that’s logical but the entire point of the psyop is to make create that logic. And I know that makes me sound crazy because that’s the point of the psyop.
entropicdrift@lemmy.sdf.org 1 month ago
The issue with the line of thinking you’re espousing is that without evidence, you’re suggesting a more complicated cause than simple chance.
Like yes, it is possible that somebody or some group lined all of these things up in advance, but it’s also entirely possible that there’s a ton of noise out there on the internet and that those with nefarious interests just signal boost the noise that benefits them.
Think of all the millions of random schizo-posters out there. You just pick whichever makes the right sounds and boost them. No need to invent the crazy when there’s crazy on tap.
FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website 1 month ago
Let’s not call it psy op then. We need a new term. BS op maybe?