#QANON: SATANIC PANIC FOR THE MATRIX GENERATION

What is #QAnon? It’s the answer to a question no one asked: Namely, how can Pizzagate bullshit get any shittier?

Last year I thought Pizzagate—the single worst use of the Internet since the Hamster Dance—was already the worst that Anti-Satanist fuck-ups could fuck up. Only bad aim and poor planning kept a cracked nut from killing Washington DC pizzeria employees in December 2016 in reprisal for that sinister “Satanic” agenda that exists only in a few people’s minds.

(Ed Welch got four years in prison for the botched shooting. They presumably keep him away from the prison cafeteria.)

But just in time for the new year, there’s a new brand of Anti-Satanist digital delusion. And, like a drunk man reciting the alphabet, it starts with Q.

“Who else?”

Q is the unimaginative pseudo-pseudonym of 2017’s most successful troll. This guy has tens of thousands of 4chan users convinced he’s a secret White House informant. Paris Martineau explains in New York Magazine:

“Q claimed to be a high-level insider charged with posting intel straight to 4chan. Thanks to a lot of wishful thinking, people believed he was the real deal. I signed up for ‘Track Your Hashtag’ services and #QAnon hit the 2,000-post limit within four hours.”

Pizzagate pricks might have wondered why nobody arrested the evil Satanic Democrat child traffickers after the Comet Ping Pong “story” broke last year. #QAnon assures them that they actually have.

The indictments and arrests all happened in secret, you see, and the trials too. This would be incredibly illegal if true, but I guess Neo Nazi Anti-Satanist 4chan users don’t count many constitutional scholars among their ranks.

Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Podesta, and for some reason John McCain are all in prison, #QAnon promises. So are 10,000 anonymous “perps.”

Their occasional public appearances are part of a clever ruse masterminded by ostensible POTUS Donald Trump. Anything that might appear to discredit the theory is actually part of the theory.

#QAnon even promises that “certain laws have been pre-lifted [sic] to provide our great military necessary authority to conduct these operations.”

If any of this were true it’d be the scariest political development since 1932. As it stands, the fact that 4chumps take it all seriously comes in a close second.

And Anti-Satanists do believe this, in the same way your cat believes it will one day catch the red dot. Except your cat isn’t allowed to buy a rifle. (Yet.)

“I’m a reasonable man. I mean, just look at me.”

8chan, the baffling Phantom Zone for shit too stupid even for 4chan users, has a misnamed FAQ (no one should ask these questions, much less frequently…) insisting that it’s all really real, yo:

“A titanic battle of good versus evil is taking place. On the good side, the president and loyal armed forces. On the evil side, the elites. Q says 80% of this battle will never see the light of day. But it is happening.”

That sort of talk has a familiar ring to it: Apocalyptic religions have claimed for centuries that an invisible war between good and evil rages around us. Puritan witch hunters said it. Doomsday cults say it. Roy Moore says it while not conceding his Senate race, etc.

“The vast majority of the elites are Satan worshippers [sic] who sacrifice children to the ancient god Moloch,” 8chan adds, in case anyone somehow missed the undertones. “They run global child trafficking networks for organs and blood to keep them young.”

For reference, this is what John Podesta looks like. If that’s the best his youth-blood-organ vendor can do he should think about a refund.

The last Satanic Panic was bad, but it labored under certain reality-based restrictions: Arrests had to actually happen, trials needed to start, police, prosecutors, psychologists, and Geraldo had to buy into zany lies, etc. In short, shit had to go really down.

The new Satanic Panic finds reality surplus to requirements. Now some one-letter doofus just says that something happened and presto, it’s as good as true.

No one needs antiquated concepts like prosecutions, witnesses, or evidence of any kind. These days, the mere belief that things occur suffices. In some holographic, Baudrillard version of reality that believers immaculately conceive through pure meme thought, the conspiracy doesn’t have to be real, because it’s already real enough.

Pop culture circles call that approach to material a kind of canon. For conspiracy assholes, it’s #QAnon.

Not to be confused with “cannon.” Although…