Thread by @doctorow

The Qanon phenomenon is many things: for one thing, it's a grift. Q's top spokesgargoyles earn small fortunes in ad revenue, crowdfunding and merchandise.

pluralistic.net/2020/05/15/out…

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But it's also an Alternate Reality Game: an intense interactive mystery narrative that is collaboratively designed by its players, who create theories to explain the mystery, which get adopted by the "game masters" and integrated into the tale.

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One of the world's foremost ARG designers is @sixtostart's @AdrianHon, who wrote a long article on how ARG-like elements supercharge cults like Qanon. Whatever else Qanon is for its members, it's also FUN.

mssv.net/2020/08/02/wha…

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"QAnon pushes the same buttons that ARGs do, whether by intention or by coincidence. In both cases, 'do your research' leads curious onlookers to a cornucopia of brain-tingling information."

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ARGs involve fiendish puzzles that must be solved with pattern-matching and intense research. Sometimes players can't solve the puzzles, or their solutions are wrong -- but really cool. ARG runners ("puppetmasters") (no, really) revise the game in realtime based on players.

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This is what cult members do when their own predictions and solutions misfire, turning every failed prophecy into an opportunity for new theory-spinning, a new prophecy whose creator gets lionized (and, maybe, paid) for their creativity.

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Anthropologists who interview Qanon cultists say they self-report pleasure from writing "Qanon stories" after their kids go to bed. These stories gain status for their authors in intense, socially important online communities.

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ARGs are showcases for the unrecognized storytelling and puzzle-solving talents of their players - and so is Q, a vast improv theater where your ability to connect disparate, unrelated events with narrative threads wins enormous social capital.

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A game that is a pleasure and positive for its players when it's fictional turns into a destructive cult when it's treated as real. It's the difference between playing The Beast and Reddit's Boston Bomber thread, which led to false terrorism accusations against innocents.

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Hon elaborated on his essay in a @nytimes interview with @cwarzel, especially the mantra "This is not a game," a phrase that gained currency in the writing for (duh) a game, Microsoft's "The Beast."

nytimes.com/2020/08/04/opi…

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Hon also identifies social media's upvote/downvote tools as a Darwinian winnower for Q theories, a way to surface the most intriguing and rewarding fantasies, as a force-multiplier for conspiracism.

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Most importantly, Hon theorizes that Q is a playbook that others will copy to target and recruit vulnerable, traumatized people into future cults.

eof/