Thread by @QOrigins

MEGATHREAD: "GUYS WE NEED TO DIG" -- ANONS DISCOVER Q

INTRO

Q's earliest activity drew little attention or excitement from anons. But that changed dramatically in the thread where Q posted drops 6-13. He got rapturous, breathless responses; here's my favorite.

In fact, by the time that post was made, there was already a separate thread about Q -- and it was about an hour old.

This thread, linked below (warning: 4chan is an open sewer and you read at your own risk), is the first instance of QAnon culture.

archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/147…

A key element of QAnon culture, "baking," makes its first appearance in this thread.

"Baking" is what happens when the anons take one or more parts of Q's drops and speculate about their meaning until a consensus emerges. (This isn't a terribly precise definition, but it'll do.)

We have hard evidence that Q was reading this thread: it featured a long derail about the Mayo Clinic (samples below), and Q's next batch of drops included one (archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/147…) that asked, "What is the Mayo Clinic?
Who sits on the BOD there?" -- see 2nd screenshot here.

But the speculation about Q didn't end with this thread. You can only make so many posts in a 4chan thread, so another anon created a second thread to discuss Q.

In THAT thread, adrenochrome made its first appearance in the QAnon extended universe.

archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/147…

The adrenochrome shenanigans deserve their own thread (and feature a LOT of baking-esque activity of their own, strongly suggesting that this kind of activity was a part of 4chan culture before Q; I've also seen similar behavior in "human trafficking general" threads).

So this thread won't include adrenochrome stuff, but questions within its remit include: how did anons discuss Q in these threads? Which anons were most active? What was the general tone, and what consensus did anons reach about what Q was hinting at?

One last note: I'll post a shorter summary after the megathread, so feel free to mute this thread if you're not interested in the very detailed version.

PART A: THREAD CONTEXT

This thread took place in the late night and early morning of Oct 29/30, 2017.

One major (non-)event shaped the anons' discussion: the alleged "antifa civil war" supposedly scheduled for 11/4/17.

As you may vaguely remember, the far-right Internet was convinced that antifa was going to start a civil war with mass murders of conservatives on 11/4/17. This was, of course, ridiculous nonsense that originated in the fever swamps of the right-wing Internet.

The Verge has a very good explainer; the most relevant part is in the screenshot below.

theverge.com/2017/11/3/1660…

Anons were VERY preoccupied with this and were, of course, 100% convinced it was going to happen. You'll see a lot of "November 4th" references; that's what's up.

PART B: WHO WAS POSTING IN THESE THREADS?

The thread's creator was perhaps the world's first Q superfan.

User J8SXe2Kn made a staggering 67 posts in the first thread, and had a *lot* to do with this thread catching on.

They weren't shy about why Q's posts appealed to them:

The other chief participant was "Oswald Shilvestigator," whose posting activity (under that username, anyway) was confined only to that evening. This user was active in two other threads besides the Q discussion, and was very excitable -- and very open:

archive.4plebs.org/_/search/usern…

But perhaps the biggest surprise was how *international* this thread was (ping: @_MAArgentino) -- anons with Swiss, Japanese, Finnish, French, and Australian flag icons participated in the original thread, and the second thread was created by an anon with a German flag icon.

Presumably, time zones had a LOT to do with the strong international element -- by the time the first thread drew to a close, it was almost 4 AM Eastern time, but it would have been the early afternoon in most of Europe.

But I was surprised to see how motivated and detail-oriented some of these overseas anons were. A putative Hong Konger, for instance (who also posted later with a pirate flag, so I'm not 100% sure they're really from Hong Kong) wrote:

In any event, OP and Oswald are the main players in this thread. The third and last influential anon was the one who really had a bee in their bonnet about the Mayo Clinic, user 298DZA5G.

It's unclear whether this guy's Mayo Clinic obsession dates to Pizzagate or /HTG/.

/HTG/ threads (sample is below) are EXTREMELY interesting because they feature behavior that's at the very least a kissing cousin to baking, and are heavily based on information from 4chan's most reviled LARPer: Anonymous5, AKA "Frank."

archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/135…

I'm not gonna get into a whole derail about HTG or Frank right now (although Frank is AMAZING), but I WILL add one last thing before moving on:

@richard_move (and yes, I see what he did with that username) has made a bunch of good points in the comments. Short version:

take all of this with a grain of salt. People lie about their identities on 4chan all the time, and some or all of these posters could be Q's sockpuppets -- which is especially plausible if (as some have alleged) Q was a group LARP.

This was a good reminder, so thanks!

why would you retweet my most terrible prose

this is violence

P.S. Assuming these ARE separate people, the Mayo Clinic anon was the first known person to be "Q'd." Sort of. Admittedly, without a link to their post, so... does that count?

PART C: OK, WHAT *HAPPENED* IN THESE THREADS?

The first thread started with OP reposting Q's drops from that evening -- numbers 6-11.

So it's important to remember that when anons started discussing Q, they were *not* aware of the "Hillary will be arrested 10/30" prediction.

Later in the thread, OP added drops 12 and 13. But the key point is that throughout the whole discussion, anons had access only to drops 6-13, so no one was able to take the (very sensible) approach of "We'll just reserve judgment on this anon's accuracy until after the 30th."

In fact, it appears that no one linked drop 1 to Q until November 11th (see below).

This was *extremely fortunate* for Q; if he'd caught on right away, most likely people would have brought up drop 1 all the time, making it harder to gain followers.

archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/149…

The second thread was almost entirely consumed by the adrenochrome derail; *almost* nothing noteworthy happened in it, except for the post that led me to the lost drops. So thanks for that, anon.

archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/147…

Here's how the first thread developed, in chronological order:

* Anons asked: Why WOULD "military intelligence" override civilian agencies? (Anons immediately gravitated towards the theory of martial law; they were eager, even thirsty, to see Trump's opponents punished).

* Anons started speculating on what might trigger this definitely-imminent declaration of martial law -- this is my favorite post from this phase of the conversation, bc I imagine anons going "ah, yes, that IS what presidents do all the time; it's such a well-known pattern!"

* the first accusation of LARPing reared its head, and the OP responded IMMEDIATELY (within less than a minute) to defend Q's honor. This may also suggest that OP was a sockpuppet of Q's, but of course we have no proof.

* An inevitable LARPer appeared (not really a "major theme," but if you put a gun to my head and demanded that I identify the one post in this thread that's most likely to be a Q sockpuppet, this is the one I would pick);

* Discussion drifted back around to martial law.

At this point, the discussion is mainly between four or five anons, with a few other users zipping in and out from time to time.

* Another anon jumps in to start talking about the Marines, and the thread REALLY takes off.

The image in that last post was called "mattiswillpurgethecommies.jpg," and anons were just... very excited at the prospect.

* The Mayo Clinic derail happened, and

* the thread petered out, though not before a series of posters fantasized about Marines shooting Antifa and MS13 on November 4th.

I'm actually leaving out one notable theme -- anons spent a fair amount of time discussing an executive order Trump signed recalling, I believe, some military aviators to service.

This was pretty obscure, so it seems likely anons were already following Trump's every action...

and searching them for hidden clues to the coming apocalypse, when -- well, I'll let this anon tell you how he thought it was all going to end.

You'll note that these aren't, for the most part, themes Q had touched on in the drops. They're just... stuff 4chan already believed.

But that's par for the course by now. If there's one thing my account has been *about*, it's that many 4chan denizens already believed in something very, very similar to the Q metaplot before Q started posting.