As people who fancy themselves social hackers have become more involved with QAnon, they've brought with them the kinds of internet antics that have worked for them in the past on chan boards, forums and other platforms on social media.

The most annoying of these is sockpuppets.
For those who might not know, sockpuppets are non-genuine accounts that are created with the purpose of deceiving others. The usual tactic is to create the impression that an idea or person has more support than they really do, a single user controlling many accounts.
They're used to steer threads, rig polls, harass dissenters, and create the appearance of consensus.

And it might seem like a waste of time to you, and I might agree, but there are folks out there for whom this is their online entertainment.
There are communities out there dedicated to uncovering the sockpuppets of particularly hated users, and this too is a form of entertainment.

The hated user creates new accounts and the hunters chase them. Both sides enjoy the game, though probably neither side would admit it.
Sockpuppets erode the confidence of users on a platform, particularly an anonymous one with low barriers to entry.

If a user has 5 or 40 or 100 bad faith accounts and decides to latch on to you, it's natural that you would start to wonder who's real.
Calling them out sometimes works, as does reporting.

But I'm sorry to say there's no real solution. If Twitter is to remain an anonymous, open platform, then bad-faith actors generating dozens of accounts is a consequence.

Caution is appropriate on anonymous platforms.

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More from @dappergander

14 Dec
Our prediction that QAnon was going to completely lose their minds today seems to be right on the money.

So here's some more upcoming dates and events they're going to push.
Later on tonight, they will refocus their energy to believing a report from DNI will be issued on the 18th which will overturn the election.

That's based on their complete misunderstanding of the 2018 Executive Order.
I assume by the time the 18th rolls around, they will have workshopped this new narrative that Mike Pence will look at both the real elector vote and the Trump "alternative elector" vote and decide to give everything to Trump. Image
Read 7 tweets
13 Dec
QAnon believers have accepted a simplified narrative to explain history & current events because they find it difficult to confront how complicated the world really is.

How the conservative psyche reached that point is similarly complicated.

Don't construct a QAnon for QAnon.
That's a great example. Conservatives have been fed an ever-amplifying story about the destruction of America for decades.

But would they have fallen for it if they didn't already believe in a coming apocalypse?

Everything is built upon what came before.
Yes, that too! And that one issue in *itself* has a complicated history. Education in America has been a trainwreck for decades and we all know this. How should we measure outcomes? Why continue to tie public education to property taxes?
Read 5 tweets
11 Dec
QAnon is never going to just "go away." There is always going to be another angle for the grifting influencers.

HOWEVER, this would be a great time to reach out to your relatives and friends who have been ensnared in the cult and talk to them. ImageImage
Feel free make fun of the clerics of QAnon though, they're idiots. But if you see rank and file Anons freaking out, just ask them to come back. Image
Read 4 tweets
11 Dec
There's going to be a Qruise
This is going to be better than the Ramtha retreat
This is an event for the ages
Read 5 tweets
10 Dec
if you're jazzed up by these announcements, I'm genuinely happy for you, you're going to have a great couple years
Read 4 tweets
10 Dec
Sometimes people ask why we call QAnon a cohesive movement when there's all this infighting.

Again, the answer is that the fighting is done between influencers. A majority of the rank-and-file followers of these movements are never actually persuaded to factionalize.
Sometimes this is frustrating to the influencers, who have made many attempts to excommunicate people from the movement, like Disclosure Backpack's takedown of E.

E continued to enjoy a following of tens of thousands.
The most divisive event I can think of in QAnon was the Ramtha outreach by Matrixxx. That actually *did* split the movement for a little while.

Even then a lot of QAnon believers just called for calm and encouraged their leaders to let everyone experience Q in their own way.
Read 4 tweets

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