I realize that people selling QAnan pamphlets, flags, and t-shirts benefit financially, as do social media companies that sell ad space whenever someone accesses a QAnan post or watch a video, but in the beginning, somebody must have seen an opportunity to make some money, or why else do it?
Some person, or group of people, got together and thought up the QAnan conspiracy and started spreading it in hopes it would catch on. It could have been done for purely political reasons, e.g. true Trump supporters, but something tells me somebody is making money on the suckers that fell for this conspiracy theory hook, line, and sinker. Is there no money trail to follow?
According to the reporting I’ve heard, QAnon was just one of many self-proclaimed anonymous government officials — “anons” — posting claims about government secrets on the chan image boards. Anon posts were a popular form of entertainment on the chans. Q’s posts happened to catch on and, crucially, make the jump to mainstream social media.
All indications are that the inventor of QAnon was just a chan user trying to get attention. It’s been monetized, but after its accidental popularity.
Vice News did a 3-part docu-series on the origins of QAnon. It was pretty interesting.
No actual final conclusions were drawn, but they present some compelling evidence from people who have been in on the disinformation campaign from the start. Worth a watch if you can find it.
As far as I know, QAnon is more about power than money.
The current Q is most likely the owner of 8chan, given some shenanigans that happened there. The owners are the ones who verify whether the post comes from the real Q, and there was a point where they had to do a hard reset (meaning they’d lose all their authentication tokens), and Q just happened to show up in the nick of time to be able to get verified again.
However, the people below Q who “interpret” what he says? Those people are not necessarily well know. There was the Q-Shaman, but he clearly wasn’t making money off of it. There are some known people.
That said, being anonymous, it seems highly likely that there are big players who monitor it and steer things to make money off of it. Why wouldn’t they?
The goal of QAnon is a far right takeover of the US. Look at who that would benefit from that, and that pretty much gives you the answer of who may be getting rich off of it.
I don’t know; the few preppers I know think Qanon is ridiculous. They are mostly “prepping” for events that at least plausible–not the more absurd stuff.
Yep. Sure one of them is a hard core GOP Trumpists- altho he seems to have leveled off on trump support. But he isnt crazy about his prepping. Oddly he calls is "prepping for the zombie apocalypse " since people buy that easier that saying “For the big earthquake”.
And there are preppers and preppers!.
My wife and i have prepper for a big earthquake or similar natural disaster, with at least a month worth of food and water. Plus lighting, etc. I think you are crazy if you dont prep for that.
Preppers! go for the end of civilization as we know it. Personally I think that any disaster that big- you likely wont survive the first “blast” or whatever anyway.
And living in the mountains with your snares and AR15 with 100000 rounds is way way harder than anyone thinks. In some areas- maybe.
Yep- water first, then food, first aid, lighting, heat in some areas, maybe even a battery powered fan or two in hot climes- and some solar chargers. (we have all that) Then the arsenal.
We dont have a arsenal. A .22 rifle my dad gave me when I turned 18 ,my old service pistol, and a few hundred rounds for both. I kinda think a shotgun would be nice, but this is CA, so buying one isnt easy. If you had a shotgun and a handgun with ammo, and a deer rifle in areas with deer, etc, then I think you have the arsenal you need. OK, sure, one AR15 could replace any one of those, fine. But you dont need a hundred guns or even a dozen.
From all I have seen or read, Q started as chan in joke to troll the normies. Then after it caught on, it was eventually co-opted by different right wing grifters, until the owner of 8chan took control of the account.
BTW, I have heard it said “in jest” by some hard core preppers that if they stock up on guns and you stock up on food and water, then when society collapses they will have guns and your food and water.