>Last October, an anonymous user, known simply as Q, started posting cryptic messages on the controversial message board 4chan—the common theme being that President Trump is a secret genius and his opponents, namely Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, are evil. Q reportedly claimed to be getting this information directly from the government, thanks to top-secret, “Q-type” security clearance. There has been little—if any—hard evidence to support Q’s musings. But over time, thousands of people started to believe them—or at least, to acknowledge they might be real. And they became the foundation of a wide-ranging conspiracy theory, known as QAnon, that has been covered by the New York Times and New York Magazine, among others, and discussed in more than 130,000 videos on YouTube. One of its most prominent followers: Roseanne Barr, who tweeted several references to QAnon before being fired from her hit TV show in May. —Melissa Chan
not so secret a genius anymore
mathematically impossible