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…………….,Q Who? Tracing the rise of the baroque criminal-political conspiracy theory known as QAnon.
October 5, 2017: President Trump makes an ambiguous comment about a military dinner being “the calm before the storm,” sparking conspiracist speculation.
October 28, 2017: An anonymous user who later claimed to be a high-level government informant writes a cryptic post bursting with far-right conspiracy bait about Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedin, and George Soros on 4chan’s infamous /pol/ board. The user is nicknamed Q, after the Department of Energy’s top-secret security-clearance level.
October 31, 2017: A post titled “Bread Crumbs–Q Clearance Patriot” asks rhetorical questions about POTUS, Michael Flynn, Antifa, and others.
November 2017: Calling themselves QAnon or the Storm, Q's followers spread a grab bag of Trump-era conspiracy tropes—part Pizzagate, part Seth Rich—on 4chan and 8chan.
November 1, 2017: A screenshot of “Bread Crumbs” is posted to the r/conspiracy subreddit, where it racks up nearly 600 votes and more than 500 comments over the next two months.
November 20, 2017: Q posts are compiled and released on Google Drive as “The Book of Q.”
December 19, 2017: New York magazine publishes an explainer on the conspiracy, noting that the QAnon hashtag had been tweeted so many times it had become untrackable.
March 30, 2018: Roseanne Barr tweets support for the QAnon theory that President Trump is a mastermind saving children from pedophiles. Within a day, the post amassed more than 5,000 retweets and nearly 16,000 likes.
March 30, 2018: Twitter posts a Moment about Barr’s tweets. The Daily Beast publishes a QAnon explainer; the next day, CNN, Newsweek, and others follow suit.
June 24, 2018: YouTuber Prayingmedic posts a video titled “Q for Beginners.” The video has racked up more than 380,000 views.
June 29, 2018: Snopes reports QAnon billboards appearing in Georgia and Oklahoma.
July 23, 2018: The Daily Dot interviews sellers of QAnon merchandise on Amazon, Etsy, and TeeSpring.
July 31, 2018: QAnon devotees attend a Trump rally in Tampa, Florida, holding "We Are Q" signs.
August 24, 2018: Prominent QAnon promoter Michael "Lionel" Lebron poses for a photo with President Trump in the Oval Office.
September 12, 2018: Reddit bans the main QAnon subreddit, r/great-awakening, for “inciting violence, harassment, and the dissemination of personal information.”………..
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://www.wired.com/story/wired-guide-to-conspiracy-theories/