GATE program.
Glows started dividing high IQ children in the late 80s between recruitable assets and non-recruitable assets.
Non-recruitable assets became for the most part lazy underachievers, and many ended up on image boards because of the anonymous speech and other high IQ people there.
Q leveraged hordes of high IQ civilians (labeled autists) not only for their ability to sport plausibly deniable comms, but also for their ability to work independently with spreading messages and propaganda. Also, imageboard autists that were rejected from GATE have a highly developed sense of justice and morality.
Thats my theory anyway. GATE programs have a long history of military involvement.