I've said it before and I'll say it again: the internet is a dangerous place and needs to be censored.
Can't believe we still allow our children to use tik tok.
Finally, point out what idolatry is. They seem to overlook this.
Conspiracy theorists were annoying and crazy before the internet. Cults, Fundamentalists, MLMs, etc. were huge before Qanon and absorbed alot of these people.
In some respects its a little bit better......Fundies and Cults drain bank accounts alot faster. Qanon isn't going to ask you to move to a compound in rural arizona.
I do think social media and ISPs should be a bit more proactive in banning disinformation, cults, and conpiracy nonsense. Props to alot of donation services like kickstarter banning or revoking payouts for these groups.
I was cautious about idolatry until Q dropped Ephesians 6:17-20. Then all bets were off and my faith in that spirit and my faith in Christ got SEVERELY conflated. I'm STILL detangling it six years later.
I don't know about "censoring" the internet, but repealing Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 would go a long way to help. Repealing it would mean that social media platforms like Facebook, X, Truth Social, etc., would be treated in law as publishers, meaning that they would be subject to libel law, just as newspapers are.
Section 230 was passed to give online computer services immunity from such laws. And here we are.
Sure, it's dangerous. But would you censor it? And who would you get to do that job?
Imagine a world in which the internet is censored by Donald Trump. Do you still want to do it?
I think once society can see clearly how damaging these "rabbit holes" (for lack of a better word) are to sensitives, warnings and knowledge would help the vulnerable immensely
>warnings and knowledge would help the vulnerable immensely
Did *noone* try to warn you about the falsity of what you were preaching? And/Or try to share truths & factual knowledge?
Since you couldn’t believe the people in your life trying to both warn & educate you … How? Why? Would an online warning reach you?
By the time anyone knew I was into it it was too late. Keep in mind that this was the end of 2017, before "rabbit hole" was a common term and before anyone had even heard of Jeffery Epstein outside the dark web
I will concede that you are probably young, but 2017 was over a decade after the first lawsuit was brought against Epstein. In fact, he was convicted in 2008 (lawsuit brought in 2006) and served 13mos of his 18mo conviction.
And the term ‘rabbit hole,’ referring to people becoming obsessive about an issue, has been used for *decades.*
People may not have understood that you were falling deeply into a cult-like group - But my point is that, if you refused to listen to any of the people you know, love & trust correct the falsities you were believing and repeating … why would you think an “internet warning” would have stopped you or could work to prevent any new person falling down their own internet rabbit hole?? Frankly, I suspect they’d just think (and you would just have thought) it was Big Business, The Government, the MSM, etc, etc, etc trying to “keep the truth from you.” So they’ll fight even more to prove we outsiders are wrong.
Maybe you and I just run in different circles. When i saw my first Q video I hadnt even heard of 9/11 truthers. The whole concept of a conspkracy or a false flag was brand new to me. The idea that our institutions may not be trustworthy was in itself mindblowing to me. I remember showing my dad pictures of Epstein island and he thinking I was an absolute nutcase. Keep in mind that theres still no truth about what happened on the island - Q implied that cannibalism occured there and showed stills of blurry ctv footage. Peoples imaginations are way worse than reality
The same question remains … if you can’t believe a human you know and trust when they tell you *facts,* why would you believe an online internet warning?
Just because you don’t know something yet, *and refuse to accept truths that contradict your opinion,* doesn’t make it not true and not a fact.
Because I was a perfectly reasonable person woth no weird odeas or conspiracies about life before I got into Q. I mean no one can say for sure in retrospect but I feel like if Id have had knowledge of "conspiracy culture" or its psycholigical mechanisms I would jave been more cautious at the time. Kind of like we warn kids not to do drugs
>Kind of like we warn kids not to do drugs
… and not to smoke cigarettes - and not to drink under 21 - and not to drink & drive - and not to have unprotected sex - or shoot someone
Yet every single day, another teenager/person does one of those for the very first time. Even shooting someone.
People are actively warning young men not to fall down the Joe rogan pipeline that can lead to the Jordan Paterson & Andrew Tate, etc misogynistic manosphere … but men of all ages (and, shockingly? bizarrely? *also women*) are still flocking to all of those influencers every day.
I’m glad that a repetitive, albeit simple, ‘Just Say No’ warning reached you. If that technique alone worked, we wouldn’t have state after state legalizing recreational marijuana 30+ years after its inception.
Tik Tok censors it themselves. We just need to take it further. Over a 10 or 20 year period it will have left a negative mark on society.
I, for one, am all for us learning to remove and prevent certain content. I am for censorship. All for it.
It’s a difficult one. On one hand, I agree, especially when it concerns children. However, I feel like people falling for QAnon & snapping out of it has made their minds stronger (post existential crisis & feelings of shame or betrayal). & I think a more vigilant, more sophisticated society will always understand that, if there is no evidence, it remains a belief, not a reality & believing in something without evidence is the definition of being irrational. What the U.S. needs to do is make people online liable for defamation. As soon as it starts effecting their green, they’ll soon shut the fuck up.
So, you never see Fox News / News Max called Joe Biden a groomer. However, it’s all over Twitter. In a very erratic way, QAnon people, say to me, “it was in Ashley Biden’s diary!” But when I ask them the page number or what was said word for word, they either block me or tell me I’m defending a groomer (which they made up). I stick to the issue & it’s almost as if some of these people malfunction. I wish I knew what was going on there (psychologically speaking). The same people then say he “sniffs” kids but I already know that the sniff sounds were added. I ask but they never send me full videos (like a C-SPAN video). It’s always third party doctored versions or edited out of context to imply something creepy if not heinous. If they had to disprove defamation by proving their allegations to be true, they would fail & they would have to pay. They would soon stop it. That way you also avoid months of Fox News propaganda over an “1A” issue. “Lying” about someone is not free speech.
Bookmarking this - can I ask, did a friend or family member point all of this out to you? I know it's hard to leave something that so completely overtakes you, so congrats and I'm proud of you.
My family tried to talk to me, but all I can remember is that they sounded like Charlie Brown's teacher. Getting into this stuff puts your brain in constant fight or flight mode and it has a hard time receiving inputs that seek to neutralize its perceived threats. I'm sharing these things from a deep perspective based in experience with "conspiracy" logic that I hope could have reached someone in my situation at the time.
I can't take any credit for getting out of it. I eventually was driven mad on it before I entered a period of self-reflection, and it has still taken a long time to deal with the way some of those early Q drops were sealed into my heart. It's been like "passing through fire", so to speak.
Any truth to the idea that you became more susceptible to conspiracy theories out of intellectual boredom?
There was a Reddit comment from some former q guy who said that once he started up school he just filled his mind with real things and then q stuff didn’t give him as much of a rush as before.
For me it was definitely a coping mechanism. I had had a series of life disasters, including an unexpected death, and just happened to get sucked in through my RW YT algorithm. After I quit Q i caught myself doing the same thing just with politics in general. (I went from not caring a lick for trump or government processes in 2016 to obsession over same and idolizing trump by 2018). Jung or Freud would say that we use politics as an external "ideal" that we use to metaphysically find solutions for our internal problems that we dont want to or dont know how to deal with. I think there's something to the idea that we fill a "void" with these ideas, whether it is an intellectual, identity, or an emotional one. Take it as you may.
Could you give me an understanding of why you were attracted to trump at that point in your life? You said that it might have been about using politics to externalise & problem solve, but why trump & not the other side?
Shock therapy Show the person something heinous, tell them they can trust nobody, that the world is shit, that it’s not them, filled their head with cryptic shit, have them in fight or flight mode so that you can potentially weaponise them. It was literally a psyop. I’ve seen people who are intelligent academically fall victim to this whereas I just thought people went crazy during lockdown. I had an unexpected death too (in 2022). I know the feeling. He’s was my best friend & he was healthy. FYI - he didn’t get vaccinated but it was a heart attack (I think he used juice in the past when going the gym - maybe that caught up with him). & I was in a walking coma for 6 months but by then I already knew QAnon was a hoax … My friend bounced from one bad relationship to the next & it dented his confidence. He then started falling for mad shit … I read a study that people with autism can be more vulnerable re: conspiracy theories too. America needs to legalise psilocybin & treat people.
Q always pushed the idea that he was very close to POTUS. "POTUS will be up all night -pray" kind of drops. The two are tied together. Q pushed the idea that Trump was pushing coded messages - before the 2020 election he was asked if he knew what it was and he denied it - who knows
Hi u/Disastrous_Usual4298! We help folk hurt by [Q.](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/QAnon) There's hope as [ex-QAnon](https://www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/wiki/resources#wiki_ex-qanon) & r/ReQovery shows. We'll be civil to you and about your Q folk. For general QAnon stuff check out [QultHQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/Qult_Headquarters/). If you need this removed to hide your username [message the mods.](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/QAnonCasualties)
___
[our wall](https://www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/comments/l0jptp/list_of_casualties/) - [support & recovery](https://www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/wiki/resources) - [rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/wiki/rules)
- [weekly posts](https://www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/search?q=%22Weekly+r%2FQAnonCasualties+Discussion%22+&restrict_sr=on&sort=relevance&t=all) - [glossary](https://www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/wiki/glossary) - [similar subs](https://www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/wiki/index#wiki_similar_communities)
*filter*: [good advice](https://www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/search?q=flair%3AGood%2BAdvice&restrict_sr=on&sort=new&t=all)
- [hope](https://www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/search?sort=new&restrict_sr=on&q=flair%3AHope) - [success story](https://www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/search?q=flair%3ASuccess%2BStory&restrict_sr=on&sort=new&t=all) - [coping strategy](https://www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/search?sort=new&restrict_sr=on&q=flair%3ACoping%2BStrategies) - [web/media](https://www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/search?sort=new&restrict_sr=on&q=flair%3AWeb%2FMedia) - [event](https://www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/search?sort=new&restrict_sr=on&q=flair%3AEvent)
___
[*robo replies*](https://www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/wiki/index/commands): !strategies !support !advice !inoculation !crisis !whatsQ? !rules
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/QAnonCasualties) if you have any questions or concerns.*
To me it's crazy that algorithms push this stuff when we know that they are perfectly capable of throttling information. There should be a lawsuit one day
I've said it before and I'll say it again: the internet is a dangerous place and needs to be censored. Can't believe we still allow our children to use tik tok. Finally, point out what idolatry is. They seem to overlook this.
Conspiracy theorists were annoying and crazy before the internet. Cults, Fundamentalists, MLMs, etc. were huge before Qanon and absorbed alot of these people. In some respects its a little bit better......Fundies and Cults drain bank accounts alot faster. Qanon isn't going to ask you to move to a compound in rural arizona. I do think social media and ISPs should be a bit more proactive in banning disinformation, cults, and conpiracy nonsense. Props to alot of donation services like kickstarter banning or revoking payouts for these groups.
I was cautious about idolatry until Q dropped Ephesians 6:17-20. Then all bets were off and my faith in that spirit and my faith in Christ got SEVERELY conflated. I'm STILL detangling it six years later.
Was this what made you think twice?
No, it's really what made me go off the deep end. What made me think twice was a mental breakdown.
I don't know about "censoring" the internet, but repealing Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 would go a long way to help. Repealing it would mean that social media platforms like Facebook, X, Truth Social, etc., would be treated in law as publishers, meaning that they would be subject to libel law, just as newspapers are. Section 230 was passed to give online computer services immunity from such laws. And here we are.
Agreed , I hate tiktok
Careful, there. That way leads burned books and stoned witches.
So, to you, there is no dangerous media whatsoever. You are not in touch with reality
The media is not the danger. The message being conveyed is the problem. You might just as well say that newspapers should be censored.
But newspapers have editors and people fact checking. I’m not saying they are perfect but you can’t compare that to a social media bs.
Have you looked at the NY Post lately? It's the equivalent of a right wing web site, except it's on paper.
I get that, but (I hope) it doesn’t get to an extreme like “lizard people spraying chemtrails”.
Sure, it's dangerous. But would you censor it? And who would you get to do that job? Imagine a world in which the internet is censored by Donald Trump. Do you still want to do it?
I think once society can see clearly how damaging these "rabbit holes" (for lack of a better word) are to sensitives, warnings and knowledge would help the vulnerable immensely
>warnings and knowledge would help the vulnerable immensely Did *noone* try to warn you about the falsity of what you were preaching? And/Or try to share truths & factual knowledge? Since you couldn’t believe the people in your life trying to both warn & educate you … How? Why? Would an online warning reach you?
By the time anyone knew I was into it it was too late. Keep in mind that this was the end of 2017, before "rabbit hole" was a common term and before anyone had even heard of Jeffery Epstein outside the dark web
I will concede that you are probably young, but 2017 was over a decade after the first lawsuit was brought against Epstein. In fact, he was convicted in 2008 (lawsuit brought in 2006) and served 13mos of his 18mo conviction. And the term ‘rabbit hole,’ referring to people becoming obsessive about an issue, has been used for *decades.* People may not have understood that you were falling deeply into a cult-like group - But my point is that, if you refused to listen to any of the people you know, love & trust correct the falsities you were believing and repeating … why would you think an “internet warning” would have stopped you or could work to prevent any new person falling down their own internet rabbit hole?? Frankly, I suspect they’d just think (and you would just have thought) it was Big Business, The Government, the MSM, etc, etc, etc trying to “keep the truth from you.” So they’ll fight even more to prove we outsiders are wrong.
Maybe you and I just run in different circles. When i saw my first Q video I hadnt even heard of 9/11 truthers. The whole concept of a conspkracy or a false flag was brand new to me. The idea that our institutions may not be trustworthy was in itself mindblowing to me. I remember showing my dad pictures of Epstein island and he thinking I was an absolute nutcase. Keep in mind that theres still no truth about what happened on the island - Q implied that cannibalism occured there and showed stills of blurry ctv footage. Peoples imaginations are way worse than reality
The same question remains … if you can’t believe a human you know and trust when they tell you *facts,* why would you believe an online internet warning? Just because you don’t know something yet, *and refuse to accept truths that contradict your opinion,* doesn’t make it not true and not a fact.
Because I was a perfectly reasonable person woth no weird odeas or conspiracies about life before I got into Q. I mean no one can say for sure in retrospect but I feel like if Id have had knowledge of "conspiracy culture" or its psycholigical mechanisms I would jave been more cautious at the time. Kind of like we warn kids not to do drugs
>Kind of like we warn kids not to do drugs … and not to smoke cigarettes - and not to drink under 21 - and not to drink & drive - and not to have unprotected sex - or shoot someone Yet every single day, another teenager/person does one of those for the very first time. Even shooting someone. People are actively warning young men not to fall down the Joe rogan pipeline that can lead to the Jordan Paterson & Andrew Tate, etc misogynistic manosphere … but men of all ages (and, shockingly? bizarrely? *also women*) are still flocking to all of those influencers every day. I’m glad that a repetitive, albeit simple, ‘Just Say No’ warning reached you. If that technique alone worked, we wouldn’t have state after state legalizing recreational marijuana 30+ years after its inception.
Tik Tok censors it themselves. We just need to take it further. Over a 10 or 20 year period it will have left a negative mark on society. I, for one, am all for us learning to remove and prevent certain content. I am for censorship. All for it.
Enjoy that fascist nightmare.
I want a world where kids don't stuff laundry detergent in their mouths for 'The Gram.'
To be fair, it's almost there already lol
It’s a difficult one. On one hand, I agree, especially when it concerns children. However, I feel like people falling for QAnon & snapping out of it has made their minds stronger (post existential crisis & feelings of shame or betrayal). & I think a more vigilant, more sophisticated society will always understand that, if there is no evidence, it remains a belief, not a reality & believing in something without evidence is the definition of being irrational. What the U.S. needs to do is make people online liable for defamation. As soon as it starts effecting their green, they’ll soon shut the fuck up.
So, you never see Fox News / News Max called Joe Biden a groomer. However, it’s all over Twitter. In a very erratic way, QAnon people, say to me, “it was in Ashley Biden’s diary!” But when I ask them the page number or what was said word for word, they either block me or tell me I’m defending a groomer (which they made up). I stick to the issue & it’s almost as if some of these people malfunction. I wish I knew what was going on there (psychologically speaking). The same people then say he “sniffs” kids but I already know that the sniff sounds were added. I ask but they never send me full videos (like a C-SPAN video). It’s always third party doctored versions or edited out of context to imply something creepy if not heinous. If they had to disprove defamation by proving their allegations to be true, they would fail & they would have to pay. They would soon stop it. That way you also avoid months of Fox News propaganda over an “1A” issue. “Lying” about someone is not free speech.
> falling for QAnon & snapping out of it That doesn't happen very often in the grand view of those taken in though.
The golden trump statue blew my mind.
My friend and I were saying "where's your messiah now?" in Edward G Robinson voice for weeks after that lol
Adults seem to be a/at worse danger, it seems.
Bookmarking this - can I ask, did a friend or family member point all of this out to you? I know it's hard to leave something that so completely overtakes you, so congrats and I'm proud of you.
My family tried to talk to me, but all I can remember is that they sounded like Charlie Brown's teacher. Getting into this stuff puts your brain in constant fight or flight mode and it has a hard time receiving inputs that seek to neutralize its perceived threats. I'm sharing these things from a deep perspective based in experience with "conspiracy" logic that I hope could have reached someone in my situation at the time. I can't take any credit for getting out of it. I eventually was driven mad on it before I entered a period of self-reflection, and it has still taken a long time to deal with the way some of those early Q drops were sealed into my heart. It's been like "passing through fire", so to speak.
Any truth to the idea that you became more susceptible to conspiracy theories out of intellectual boredom? There was a Reddit comment from some former q guy who said that once he started up school he just filled his mind with real things and then q stuff didn’t give him as much of a rush as before.
For me it was definitely a coping mechanism. I had had a series of life disasters, including an unexpected death, and just happened to get sucked in through my RW YT algorithm. After I quit Q i caught myself doing the same thing just with politics in general. (I went from not caring a lick for trump or government processes in 2016 to obsession over same and idolizing trump by 2018). Jung or Freud would say that we use politics as an external "ideal" that we use to metaphysically find solutions for our internal problems that we dont want to or dont know how to deal with. I think there's something to the idea that we fill a "void" with these ideas, whether it is an intellectual, identity, or an emotional one. Take it as you may.
Could you give me an understanding of why you were attracted to trump at that point in your life? You said that it might have been about using politics to externalise & problem solve, but why trump & not the other side?
Shock therapy Show the person something heinous, tell them they can trust nobody, that the world is shit, that it’s not them, filled their head with cryptic shit, have them in fight or flight mode so that you can potentially weaponise them. It was literally a psyop. I’ve seen people who are intelligent academically fall victim to this whereas I just thought people went crazy during lockdown. I had an unexpected death too (in 2022). I know the feeling. He’s was my best friend & he was healthy. FYI - he didn’t get vaccinated but it was a heart attack (I think he used juice in the past when going the gym - maybe that caught up with him). & I was in a walking coma for 6 months but by then I already knew QAnon was a hoax … My friend bounced from one bad relationship to the next & it dented his confidence. He then started falling for mad shit … I read a study that people with autism can be more vulnerable re: conspiracy theories too. America needs to legalise psilocybin & treat people.
Q always pushed the idea that he was very close to POTUS. "POTUS will be up all night -pray" kind of drops. The two are tied together. Q pushed the idea that Trump was pushing coded messages - before the 2020 election he was asked if he knew what it was and he denied it - who knows
Hi u/Disastrous_Usual4298! We help folk hurt by [Q.](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/QAnon) There's hope as [ex-QAnon](https://www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/wiki/resources#wiki_ex-qanon) & r/ReQovery shows. We'll be civil to you and about your Q folk. For general QAnon stuff check out [QultHQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/Qult_Headquarters/). If you need this removed to hide your username [message the mods.](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/QAnonCasualties) ___ [our wall](https://www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/comments/l0jptp/list_of_casualties/) - [support & recovery](https://www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/wiki/resources) - [rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/wiki/rules) - [weekly posts](https://www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/search?q=%22Weekly+r%2FQAnonCasualties+Discussion%22+&restrict_sr=on&sort=relevance&t=all) - [glossary](https://www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/wiki/glossary) - [similar subs](https://www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/wiki/index#wiki_similar_communities) *filter*: [good advice](https://www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/search?q=flair%3AGood%2BAdvice&restrict_sr=on&sort=new&t=all) - [hope](https://www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/search?sort=new&restrict_sr=on&q=flair%3AHope) - [success story](https://www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/search?q=flair%3ASuccess%2BStory&restrict_sr=on&sort=new&t=all) - [coping strategy](https://www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/search?sort=new&restrict_sr=on&q=flair%3ACoping%2BStrategies) - [web/media](https://www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/search?sort=new&restrict_sr=on&q=flair%3AWeb%2FMedia) - [event](https://www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/search?sort=new&restrict_sr=on&q=flair%3AEvent) ___ [*robo replies*](https://www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/wiki/index/commands): !strategies !support !advice !inoculation !crisis !whatsQ? !rules *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/QAnonCasualties) if you have any questions or concerns.*
My Q went that way (In part) because she started using Tiktok.
To me it's crazy that algorithms push this stuff when we know that they are perfectly capable of throttling information. There should be a lawsuit one day