From Trolling To Fleecing: Co-Creator Of ‘Q’ Hoax Explains Its Scary Evolution

Via The Federalist

A little less than a year after the first QAnon post, which has since led hundreds of thousands of news junkies down a conspiracy rabbit hole, news correspondent Jack Posobiec from One America News Network spoke with one of the co-originators of the “Q” persona who runs a group of individuals posing as a high-level government intelligence officer. On an anonymous “free speech” platform called 8Chan, they leave thousands of riddles, “clues,” odd questions, and cryptic lines as bread crumbs for their followers to help them in their search for truth.

Many major media outlets have overviewed the nest of conspiracy theories nurtured within Q followers. While many have speculated about who is behind Q and how it came to exist, thanks to Posobiec’s extensive research and the confession of a co-creator who goes by the pseudonym “Microchip,” we now know, with a high degree of certainty, the real origin story of QAnon.

Microchip’s story is believable, and he doesn’t appear to have a good motivation for taking credit for QAnon if he didn’t actually help create it. Additionally, Posobiec indicated he had long suspected it was him before Microchip confessed, after following the suspected Q creators closely for many months.

Although the OANN report was published in early September, it’s hard to take down Q enthusiasts. On the internet, lies don’t die, but continue on in half-life until, like ancient cockroaches, they silently crawl off into the far dark corners of the web. QAnon, while fully discredited for numerous failed predictions and false information in its posts alone, is a full-blown enigmatic cult.

Was QAnon A Mistake?

Like many cults, QAnon encourages its most dedicated followers to give money to the further the “great awakening” (of which Q is supposedly a leader). There is ample evidence outside of Posobiec’s report that the individuals currently running Q are financially motivated and have been for some time.

Several threads of evidence, including Microchip’s confession and Discord logs of his conversation with a co-conspirator, reveal how what was originally intended as a harmless troll to “get people thinking” quickly spun into a mythical persona whose cryptic words developed into a full-fledged conspiratorial worldview for a growing audience, now eager for more riddles (and ripe for financial exploitation).

Microchip, who is a master at creating trending topics on Twitter, and another successful pro-Trump meme-creator named Dreamcatcher, were inspired to do their own trolling by another false identity on 4Chan called FBIAnon, who also claimed to have had insider information as a high-level intelligence officer. Microchip wrote on Discord on August 18, 2017:

that signing FBIAnon is good too. Looks spooky, but we should do our own thing, like change the name to something else and use the Socratic method to question stuff out of ppl. This is what I do while trolling, gets people excited and flip sh** on suggestions alone. You know we’ve I’ve [sic] been doing this forever, we should think of something.

He said Q was more of a “mistake” than a planned, purposeful operation to “take down something.”

In his interview with Posobiec and in the chat logs with Dreamcatcher, Microchip referred to the book “Q” by the Italian prankster/writer collective Luther Blissett, whom he referred to as “the Italian author guy.” As a representative of the Wu Ming (Mandarin for “anonymous”) Foundation, an offshoot of the Luther Blissett collective, told BuzzFeed, “’Q’ is a disguised, oblique autobiography of the LBP. It is often described as Blissett’s ‘playbook,’ an ‘operations manual’ for cultural disruption.”

Finding Content For Conspiracies

Microchip and Dreamcatcher liked the idea from the book of signing “ominous messages” as “Q,” but before they launched the project, they needed to determine what their content would be. They developed a list of Trump supporters’ interests, including George Soros, and the idea that “Obama [was] working with CIA and FBI to steer the Russia investigation,” “Trump surrounding himself with generals,” and “all kinds of crazy theories” from Alex Jones.

“This is what was getting Trump supporters excited,” Microchip explained. “We put together a list of questions that would spark people’s attention” saying they then “filtered it out” on 4Chan.

Q “researchers” work these suggestive questions and fringe ideas into more complete ideas, filling in the gaps with their imaginations and thoughts from other conspiracy theorists.

Dreamcatcher saw an opportunity to go beyond just questions and suggestions. According to Microchip, “There was a [anonymous] post where somebody said ‘Hillary Clinton will be arrested,’” shortly, he said, saying it looked like a “gaslight campaign.” Then, according to Microchip, “Randomly one day Dreamcatcher on a post on 4Chan…took the snippet and added details.” The post said Clinton’s “extradition” was “already in motion.”

Although no post mentioned “Q” until November 2 (where the first reference was “Q Clearance Patriot”), this is listed as his first post in the archive. Of course, Clinton was never arrested.

Ironically, Q is also a top intelligence clearance level for the Department of Energy. That might have cemented the name for Microchip and Dreamcatcher, or for whomever they passed the account off to.

Whatever the specific origins of these themes, Microchip and others knew those ideas appealed to many on the fringe right. The debunked “Pizzagate” theory that a pedophilia ring was being run out of a pizza shop was in the original list of themes for Q content, serving as a critical seed for the intricate thought cloud surrounding Q posts and generating hype among followers.

Is QAnon Exploiting Its Followers?

“We were never a part of the full QAnon,” Microchip said, “but it’s turned dangerous…these people are being gaslit by whoever is doing it now. I didn’t want it to go that far. It was meant to be like a small unifying factor, just like the ‘petition right.’”

Microchip explained:

It’s meant to be funny, meant to get people’s imaginations going. Point is that people are being exploited by other people who are cognizant of the whole process within Trump supporters’ minds and they’re being used and I feel terrible about that. Part of the reason I even decided to speak about the story is because QAnon is dangerous. Since early 2017 [sic] I’ve told people, you’ve gotta stop doing it and I never wanted to be attached to it.

Where there is an audience for conspiracy theories, there’s money to be made. As one Q-skeptic, a YouTuber who goes by the name Unirock, recounted, he was once invited to a Discord server with some of the core “bakers,” or leading Q researchers.

“I was shocked to hear them talking about the best ways to monetize, brand, and make money off the Q movement. I sat and listened for a minute. They told me they liked the way I branded my art into my channel, asked me some questions. I left. I clicked out.”

Another YouTuber named Isaac Green (known online as AntiSchool) also opened up about being contacted by a leading baker named “FarmerFunk,” who tried to entice him to turn his channel into a “baker’s corner,” saying, “I told you that this would be a brand that would last long after Q drifts away. Build your brand wisely, sir.”

This post and other Q-critical videos and posts have since been deleted. Green told The Federalist that he “didn’t want to be associated” with QAnon, while emphasizing that QAnon is not legitimate in any way. He added that he’s experienced “cyberstalking and harassment” from Q followers.

Tracy Diaz was a small-time YouTuber at QAnon’s inception, but took interest in the posts very early on, according to NBC News’ report. Diaz admits Q gave her following a significant boost, but she has maintained that she didn’t make much money off YouTube monetization of Q posts. However, she was accepting donations for “investigative journalism” via Patreon while Q was a significant part of the content she produced. She currently has more than 96,000 YouTube subscribers and 784 patrons.

Like other content creators who had previously spoken favorably of Q posts, she realized the people behind Q aren’t doing what’s in the country’s best interest. Q “has amassed a HUGE cult-like worship in many cases,” she wrote on Twitter, and send an “army of people hanging on their every word” after their targets. “This is terrifying.”

When the 99 cent QDrops app, which allows users to “redpill with ease,” launched in April, it climbed to the top slot in the “entertainment” section. It also landed a spot in the top 10 most popular among Apple iOS apps and top 200 in paid iOS apps, according to Newsmax. Apple removed the app in July, but it has more than 5,000 installs from the Google Play store alone.

Patriot’s Soapbox And Monetizing QAnon

Perhaps the biggest money-makers in the Q realm are Coleman Rogers (PamphletAnon) and his wife Christina Urso (who goes by the name CodeMonkey), who started and run Patriot’s Soapbox (PSB), a 24/7 YouTube livestream of Q analysis and registered LLC. Unirock, who has been investigating QAnon for several months, believes that PamphletAnon is responsible for turning QAnon into a cash cow.

Although the corroborating video has been deleted by Patriot’s Soapbox, Unirock told me that during the first two months of the channel, viewers were asked to leave the livestream on at all hours of the day so they would always have a high view count.

The PSB team added $20,000 to $40,000 in equipment to upgrade their setup over the first couple of months, by Unirock’s estimates. PSB also has a merchandise store. The channel has more than 55,000 subscribers and accepts donations via PayPal and a variety of cryptocurrencies.

There are other indicators that Q promoters are financially motivated. On April 14, Q posted a picture of an obscure highway billboard that says “Where We Go One We Go All,” the unofficial the slogan of the Q community. It directed viewers to a website called DoUKnowQ.com, which, at the time I first visited the sight, sold Q merchandise in addition to providing “Q news” and “Q proofs.”

Free Markets Or Profiting Off Stupidity? Why Not Both?

Q believers have shrugged off the fact that Q researchers are profiting off the movement, citing “free market” principles. Yet whoever was posting as Q took pains to “call out” people who are profiting off the movement, saying they aren’t real “patriots” and that the only “profit we should all be striving for is true freedom.” This was two weeks after Q posted the billboard photo.

To the skeptic, this appears to be a deflection. Q believers have not yet provided me with a reasonable way to reconcile the strong statement from their leader with the profits being made off Q.

On top of all the nonsensical content is the forensic data indicating Q’s fraudulence. As Posobiec noted, PamphletAnon was once caught “claiming a post was from Q when the post did not contain the actual trip code validation. Not that hard to figure out how he knew about the post when no one else did.” Posobiec also points out that “the tripcode changes seemed to coincide with changes in the lineup of board moderators as new mods were brought in and old mods were kicked out of the group.”

QAnon’s passwords were once hacked and published along with a technical discussion from the hacker outlining the evidence that Q doesn’t secure his content the way a “high level intel officer” would. Unirock reminded me of a still more suspicious behavior: Q only posts on someone else’s 8Chan board, where Q-drops could be potentially deleted by moderators or Q’s passcode disabled. A real government agent wouldn’t put this supposedly important information at risk like that.

Could Microchip have generated fake logs to take credit for Q? It’s a possibility. But his story doesn’t exactly make him look good. Here we see a man admitting to trolling, to baiting Trump supporters with conspiracy theories, and seeming amused when his friend literally made up a prediction out of whole cloth to get the fringe right riled up––just for laughs.

Q believers flatly reject all evidence that Q is a fraud, only a sliver of which is provided in this article. Instead, they earnestly insist that Q researchers are doing “real journalism,” and that I need to “red pill” and “leave the Matrix.” They do not consider that perhaps it is they who need to wake up from their own LARP matrix and leave the virtual compound.

QAnon has such a dangerous hold over its followers because it appeals to deeper, spiritual needs. Wu Ming provides incisive commentary:

In certain ways, conspiracy theorists are in the same league as psychics, magicians, astrologists and gurus of pseudo-medicine: all these people work in the field of wonder…In doing this, they exploit human needs, because in our life we do need surprise, wonder, new angles from which looking [sic] at things and thinking we’re different. Conspiracy theorists provide all that, and channel the people’s anxiety on [sic] their lives into the belief in an all-explaining narrative.

Microchip implored Q followers to wake up. “QAnon is not resolving problems. There is no mysterious agency dispatch B to come save you riding in on a white horse like one would believe. But the idea is that you have to get out and you have to actually do stuff because QAnon is not going to save you…you gotta go out and vote, you gotta go out and do activism. You can’t just sit at home and hope that these magical guys behind the scenes are going to magically save the USA because they’re not there.”

Words to live by.

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Vixen Vic
Vixen Vic

I really hope this is the last of the Q B.S. on this website.

Francis Marion

I sincerely hope not. In fact, I think admin should boot this back to the top of the front page for fun.

Vixen Vic
Vixen Vic

Yeah, that’s a good reason, revenue. 🙂 It never hurts.

AnarchoPagan
AnarchoPagan

For those with enough intellectual curiosity to do an ounce of research, I would suggest this as the best 15 minute introduction to the Q phenomenon:

https://medium.com/@martingeddes/wwg1wga-the-greatest-communications-event-in-history-698ba926df64

Read some of this guy’s writings, or look at his CV, and try to persuade yourself that he’s a moran.

Anonymous
Anonymous

The whole thing baffles me. Obama gave Iran 150 billion dollars and 1.8 billion in cash and you think Trump is a crappy president? They illegally put people to spy on a member of the campaign. Our economy is through the roof and you want to remove a duly elected President who kept all his promises and wasn’t a P%SSY like Obama. We understand that all central banks belong to very few people not living in the USA. Every country year after year has to get a loan for more money or their Government shuts down. How come Obama killed NASA his first year? To insure the enemies get ahead of the USA in space! Why does the people want open borders? Go remove the door from the front of your house it is no different! You are wide open. Im serious you guys want open borders take down your front doors and if you prove that is the best deal then bingo we can talk. Your heros are going down! there is nothing you can do about it. I hope he calls Martial law to clean this country out! With concentrated powers of Bush declaring war in 2001 we are still in a state of war, President Trump declared a national emergency last December this gives Trump concentrated power. Buckle your seatbelts because Trump isn’t playing anymore he will use the military.

Mary Christine

“you want to remove a duly elected President ”

Who is this “you” that you are referring to? Just because someone is skeptical of this Q thing doesn’t mean that person wants the president impeached you idiot. The problem with some of you Q people is that you believe that everyone should think like you and if you don’t than we are evil.

Fuck you! You are just as dangerous as the idiots on the left with their PC bullshit.

Fleabags
Fleabags

Ooh Mary, I just love it when you’re like that..

Mary Christine
Mary Christine

I rarely use the F word. Only when I feel like I really need to make a point. It loses its value when overused.

Fleabags
Fleabags

Mary C..
I barely noticed the F bomb. Was referring to you getting forceful. It’s an old joke about the wife swooning when hubby takes charge.
I agree that they are becoming boorish. Getting in a tizzy Everytime they are challenged.
My package was late arriving but I’m back in the boonies in the morning. Hope your healing up well. Did you get a boob job or were you just trolling Coy-Dog?

Mary Christine
Mary Christine

Hoping it’s the last time I go under anesthesia forever. Had some fat grafting for a more “natural ” look.

It’s as good as it’s going to get.

Rossa
Rossa

Here’s a couple to get your teeth into. This is why people are so interested in Q.

From Neon’s Gab page. Planefag Anon points out that the Lockheed Nighthawk Stealth Attack Bomber is F-117. Q drop mentioned the ‘stealth bomber’ being deployed.

1 – A
1 – A
7 – G

Hmm….

Q has also used the acronym PAIN as in bring on the PAIN. How about Privacy, Authenication, Integrity and Non-repudiation. Used in the military and information security.

https://voat.co/v/QRV/2842716

Could refer to the investigations and those pesky old sealed indictments. Got to have them wrapped up and watertight before they get prosecuted or one commenter suggests the elections.

These examples are just to show how the Q narrative is created and develops. Nothing here is necessarily true, but it could be and it sure gets people thinking and talking about it. Don’t we all like a good detective story? All for a LARP, of course.

John Galt
John Galt

Lmao. Many of you just got punked by some homie named “microchip”. All those big supporters of “Q” signing off comments with wwg1wga always made me feel like these types of people were just ripe to join a damn cult……Maybe this will teach you to think for yourselves and quit relying on others……

Stucky

This is how I see it …..

comment image

Just need to change some verbiage;
—- change “What We Are” ————-> “Non-Q Believers”
—- change “What We Want To Be” ——-> “Q Believers”

This is why Q IS a religion …. or, at least, very much like one;

—-1) The existence of Q can not be factually and definitively proved, or disproved

—-2) Q Believers will disagree and give all kinds of examples, stories, anecdotes, and personal testimony as to the veracity of Q. But, just as in debates about God, NONE of these are “proofs”.

—-3) So, where does that leave BOTH sides? It’s all about FAITH and BELIEF!
———— The Non-Q side BELIEVES Q is a bunch of bullshit
———— The Q side relies entirely on FAITH that Q is real

.
Interestingly, let’s take a look at the behavior of Q Believers who have taken the “Leap Of Faith (LoF)”;

—-1) LoF folks think they are wiser/smarter/better than un-believers.

—-2) LoF folks worship at a special temple called 4-Chan

—-3) LoF folks often attempt to evangelize non-believers demanding they also take The Leap Of Fatith.

—-4) And this is a very important tactic; when evangelism fails, LoF folks will; a) go batshit crazy, b) rant and rave, c) call non-believers all kinds of vicious names, and d) crucify and condemn to hell, at least figuratively, every non-believer.

SO, FOLKS, WHAT YOU HAVE HERE IS A RELIGION!!

meg
meg

Obviously demanding 1st Amendment protection…

Why are you persecuting Q believers?

Stucky

Hi Double Dee! Persecution? Me? Nah! Although Q Believers ARE extremely sensitive to criticism and probably have a case of Anal Lube at home to soothe their sore asses after the beatdown given by Admin, Llpoh, EC, and others.

Ottomatik
Ottomatik

The fact you think Admin, Lloph and EC have given a beat down is unsettling. Perhaps in a 3rd grade ad hominum sense they have issued a playground beat down.
But there has been jack shit for factual refutation.
Jack shit.

EL Coyote (EC)
EL Coyote (EC)

Otto, thanks for the vote of no-confidence. Admin has been doing the heavy lifting here. I advise you to see Stuck’s summary above.

As for your comment’ what factual stuff can you offer to true believers to refute their own argument; faith in something without substance, that is self-contradicting at times?

This is a man-made religion. The true religion has but one source that has no contradiction. You don’t even need GPC to ‘splain that to you. But I always like to hear from him.

Anonymous
Anonymous

I agree EC, I offer no factual evidence of anything Q, but I am not the one making claims am I?
I perceive the value and success of the Q phenomenon.
Trump is rolling bitches over.
Q is growing.
Might want to do some careful analysis before making claims to know something you don’t.
Otto

Cynicles
Cynicles

The existence of Q can not be factually and definitively proved, or disproved

Provides plausible deniability.

wxtwxtr
wxtwxtr

— -5) Build a rainbow for them to trot over on their unicorn?

TampaRed
TampaRed

this is a bit off topic but since he was once a booster of q i’ll put it here–
jerome corsi is either a witness against a target of mueller’s russia fraud or a target himself,and based upon his behavior it seems like the latter–

https://dailycaller.com/2018/11/09/mueller-grand-jury-jerome-corsi/?utm_medium=email

Anon
Anon

Nice try but the supposed cofounder of Q got many facts wrong, if you truly want to debunk something, fraudulently, you need to do yr fkn homework first geniuses, I realize it’s scary that people are waking up, but don’t worry we got this and u can thank us later ???

EL Coyote (EC)
EL Coyote (EC)

Wow, Q-anon is now evangelizing on TBP!
Why does this blog attract all kinds of prophets from truthers to neo-Nazis to Q-balls?

SeanW
SeanW

What a pack of lies. This is the typical load of BS promoted by Prosibic, George Webb, Scott Adams who are getting their talking points from the same source. Scott implied that Trump was his source but he never actually made that claim.

However someone who actually asked Trump point blank was told “I don’t know but I hear they are great people”. The dialog above is the polar opposite of that. It’s full of false equivalencies that Q followers can spot in less than a heartbeat but it fools the sleeping public whom this message is intended for.

No serious Q follower expects Q to predict the future with perfect accuracy when taking on an enemy that is not totally predictable. But the Q haters assign way more significance to facts that are not nearly so drastic as these Q haters pretend.

The fact remains that everyone who is actively crusading against something they consider to be a LARP has something to lose from Q. They were getting highly filtered intel and were making money from it because of who they know. Then Q comes along with much tighter more solid intel than any of them have ever produced. That’s why they’re attacking Q is that Q is a threat to them. Nobody following Q is worried about Q seemingly getting it wrong.

We’re smart enough to know that, while Q could be a LARP, we also know that the accuracy of Q’s predictive abilities is many times greater than these nut jobs that are threatened by Q. So they figure out how to attack Q followers and destroy their self esteem by labeling with lots of incendiary stories to make Q followers feel like shit for following Q.

People only do that when they are threatened. However what they didn’t count on is that Q followers know that they are not what they are being attacked for. This has all the marks of the MSM which is run by the CIA. This MO has become the primary identifier of all CIA propaganda. If you see this kind of behavior from right wingers it’s 99 percent probable that it’s the CIA — or you can find the same social climate with bullies in grade school. Same MO. That’s why the CIA use it.

If Q was not a threat this would not even be a topic. But that’s the last thing that the Q haters will discuss. Instead they attack with ad hominem and straw man attacks — which is pretty much what this article above contains. The CIA are the most freaked out about Q. Nobody but the corrupt members of the CIA (and also the FBI) use this strategy and incorporate major news organizations into it.

PlatoPlubius

Funny you should mention George Webb considering Webb’s channel has divulged much more and connected way more dots with actual people, companies and crimes , chronicling atrocities and detailing the rat lines regardless of political party A WHOLE YEAR BEFORE the Q drops even began.

Look over here not over there, sorry! You ‘ve been duped and it takes alot of integrity and honesty to admit it….but many of the Q tippers jave become so hopelessly emotionally invested into the LARP that few will be able to stop drinking the juice….
Pass out the nikes and get ready for the mothership to beam you aboard….

3…2….1….energize

Robyn Lansford

It’s funny the MSM will NOT ask Trump about it….Gee, I wonder why.

PlatoPlubius

Because it isn’t time to ask him yet….

The most important element of effective propaganda is TIMING!

Mary Christine
Mary Christine

300?

wxtwxtr
wxtwxtr

“(and ripe for financial exploitation)” 🙂
And people don’t pay for entertainment in ‘Murika?
A couple Benjamins for a family to see a baseball game? Baseball? WTF?!?
I was entertained by Team Q. And optimistic. Let’s see how the Pied Piper Op plays out.

Seems like “paid liars” might be the oldest profession; the early prostitutes needing marketing.
Hasn’t “Hopium” been for sale since the beginning of time?

Hasn’t The West been run on false narratives literally forever?
Corbett’s guest analyses one from 1776:

Who Fired the Shot(s) Heard Round the World?


Why do you think they call it “His Story”?

hardscrabble farmer
hardscrabble farmer

comment image

Hello sailor.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that, just sayin’.

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