I am posting this somewhat reluctantly, for fear of arguments breaking out. At the same time we have a dangerous movement which cannot be ignore. Please comment thoughtfully.
I don’t really understand what QAnon really is. I understand there are some social media accounts that proffered conspiracy theories (which has always been true), but the reporting about it seems like a conspiracy theory in itself…
There is a person who posts under the name Q (and I’m pretty sure he’s not the one who introduced humanity to the Borg); Q makes various claims about his job and knowledge, which are clearly false; nobody knows his actual identity, though there are notions. What’s a conspiracy theory in that?
How in the world did such anonymous person come to have such outsized influence. Perhaps I’m wrong, but it seems an anonymous account could easily be a symptom or even a scapegoat of much larger social factors. The story Im hearing about Qanon just seems so simplistic as to be implausible…it sounds like a conspiracy theory itself!
I freely admit I don’t really get what is going on here, so help me out of you can.
Basically when a lot of people get together on social media and hype each other up, you can get any fringe movement you want.
Yes, it’s a symptom of larger social factors - people feeling anxious or powerless.
I do think it has a religious bent.
Yeah, but most don’t ever achieve anything like the influence that everyone ascribes to QAnon…
I don’t think it’s religious because it lacks key factors that make something a religion. Rather it is clearly related to conspiracy oriented thinking…
This might offer some insight:
The key term that describes this phenomenon is crank-magnetism, and we seem to have reached peak crank-magnetism in the QAnon conspiracy. It’s not possible to make heads or tails of, because it doesn’t have either. There may be some fact of the matter with respect to how it “all began”, but given that it has grown into some amalgamation of every crank idea that ever existed, it doesn’t matter any longer.
People with a bend towards conspiratorial thinking(for whatever their myriad reasons) find themselves outside the mainstream, and given the inevitable opposition and pushback combined with the perceived evil of the evildoers, take it as their personal crusade to rid the world of this evil.
As they are sure to quickly feel assaulted on all sides by Evil Forces™, and by their being loud and proactive about their desires to rid the world of the evils, attract other such people who are crusading against the evils of the world. As they are generally already prone to accept grandiose claims on little to no data and tie it together with some complex mix of confabulation and speculation, when one crank finds another, they copy and combine their crank ideas. Vaccines, Bill Gates, George Soros, Elites, Cultural Marxists, Pizzagaters, Her emails, Bengazi, Sandy Hook, Jack-booted Thugs, Obama phones, 911, Feminists, Gay Frogs, GMO-foods, Area 51, Pepsi cola with aborted fetus stem cells, The Jews and The Protocols of the bla bla, it’s all come together now into one giant conspiracy. The cranks have melded together on social media into one giant sludge of insanity.
And Donald Trump is their Savior. Literally. The one prophesied to end all the evil, and restore God’s justice and rule of law in America and the world.
Conspiracy theory, yes…Religion, maybe in the sense that you would need to believe in something not provable…Mass hysteria, yep…Probably a Trump aid if Trump is the savior, or Trump himself, that would be Hillaryous.
Wow this is new to me
Careful. That is amusing, and labels you as a Cultural Marxist. Not anyone connected with Karl, who would be mystified by all this – “cultural marxism” seems to refer to Groucho.
More like Harpo, except that he didn’t verbalize it.
Harpo? I see a flame war coming …
A partial answer …
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03130-6
… and some games to play! 
AND