And contrary to popular belief that QAnon followers tend to be older people with more time available to spend on conspiracy websites, PRRI data shows that 22 percent of those under 50 believe in conspiracy theories of QAnon, compared to just 14 percent of seniors. over 65 years old.
“I don’t suspect that belief in conspiracy theories like QAnon will dissipate anytime soon,” Melissa Deckman, executive director of PRRI, tells WIRED. “Trump supporters in particular are already prepared to support conspiracies that are not based on any facts at higher levels than the general public. Combined with historic levels of distrust in government and a variety of other institutions among many Americans, the conditions that allow such theories to fester and even grow sadly will not disappear anytime soon.”
Trump’s return to the White House has been widely celebrated by the QAnon community, whose members believe that all the wild predictions Q made in his thousands of posts will now come true.
“The general agreement is that Trump is going to crush the Deep State and that all the evil liberals will go to jail as soon as possible, that we will go back to the gold standard and that the Federal Reserve will be destroyed,” said Mike Rains, a researcher who follows close to the QAnon community, he tells WIRED. “Ukrainian biolabs will be exposed as the source of Covid and (Anthony) Fauci and company will be sentenced to death for crimes against humanity.”
This can be seen on Telegram channels and fringe platforms like Gab and Truth Social, where QAnon influencers took refuge following the massive purge of QAnon accounts on mainstream platforms in 2021 following the attack on the Capitol.
But it can also be seen more and more on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and, above all, X, which has since The acquisition of centibillionaire Elon MuskIt provided fertile ground for the conspiracy to thrive, as well as providing income to influencers who can monetize their nonsense.
Meta, TikTok and X did not respond to comments about QAnon content on their platforms.
“It certainly doesn’t help that under Musk, evidence-free QAnon conspiracy theories have flourished across X, giving them a mass audience and a veneer of legitimacy,” Cook says.
Among those who started what was then called Twitter after the January 6 attack on the Capitol was Trump. Forced to post on his own small platform, Truth Social, he quickly embraced QAnon wholeheartedly and promoted QAnon-linked accounts nearly 1,000 times, according to an October analysis from Media Matters.
