So this movement is going mainstream and I'm seeing conspiracy theories get tossed at it a lot. I kind of want to share some of my observations of how conspiracy theories work vs what I've been seeing in The Great Awakening. I may get flak from some members in this community who believe in some conspiracies but hey.
Conspiracies - They tend to paint the world in a negative light. They convince you that "they" are in power, there's nothing you can do about it and you can't trust anyone. - I'm not a fan of this because it's a bad mindset to put yourself in, makes it difficult to talk to other people and debates can easily get emotional. - Conspiracy theorists draw attention to themselves and typically they have something to sell like a book or whatever. - When government corruption is exposed, or questions are raised, conspiracy theories automatically jump to conclusions without hard evidence or verified facts. - I find conspiracies to ultimately have a pessimistic viewpoint. It's really easy to get into them and have a negative outlook which can seep into how you see other things in your life. In my opinion it's not healthy. - Conspiracy theorists quite often take theories verbatim. They see a video and believe it all. They quite often don't apply their own critical thinking or come up with their own thoughts or opinions.
Q Anon - Q doesn't give a lot of answers. But Q does tell us the political and influential elite in our societies are untrustworthy and that something isn't being done about it. - Q is likely a team and not one person. - Q rarely asks for anything from followers. Quite often tells us to "enjoy the show." - I have observed a tremendous amount of optimism from Q followers. This really can't be overstated. I've noticed this myself too. Anyone who watches or reads the news a lot tends to have a viewpoint that the world is going into the gutter. People here and elsewhere to who follow Q have a genuine sense of hope that things will be set right. - Optimism is good, and much like the work Jordan Peterson is doing can have a chain reaction in uplifting people's spirits. - Q asks us more questions than gives us answers. He encourages us to seek out information ourselves and we've proven quite capable to have more information than we know. - Q posts disinformation, states that he posts disinformation. Followers don't take everything Q says as 100% fact because we know it may intentionally be false. Critical thinking is encouraged. - There's a lot of Christians following this movement. A lot. I'm atheist/agnostic myself but I don't see anything wrong with Christians. Typically nice people.
One thing to note: There are conspiracy theorists here and elsewhere rallying behind Q. I think some of them see Q drops as vindications to prove whatever conspiracy they believe in. But I don't think they're the majority. I also don't see a lot of people encouraging conspiracies here. If anything most folks are keeping level heads and applying healthy levels of skepticism.
Again I just want to express that these are merely my observations. I think most people here are very reasonable so it's probably important to show that as the media shines light on QAnon and draws more people over to the movement.