Saturday, October 31, 2020

r/Conspiracy pops some prison commissary-style popcorn as a breakaway faction of QAnon believers argue that "Q" is a 29yr old IT guy in Arizona who's currently being held by the FBI

tl;dr: a small faction of the QAnon movement believes that 29yr old Phoenix-area IT guy Austin Steinbart is the actual "Q" who writes all the "insider" messages for the movement. The majority of r/Conspiracy overall is not really down with Q, but for some weird reason a disproportionate chunk of Q followers on Conspo are of the Steinbart faction. So the popcorn is always good as they endlessly squabble as to whether Q is Austin Steinbart, Austin is a liar but Q is legit, or if the whole thing is just malarkey.

Okay, so at this point I'm assuming everyone knows at least the basics of QAnon. So this anon on 4chan (later moved to 8chan then 8kun), posted claiming to be an undercover operative in the Trump administration, authorized to leak the details of how Trump is fighting a counter-coup against a "Deep State" composed of (mostly) Democrats who are literal Satanic pedophile cannibals. So that's the gist. If you want a detailed writeup from the inside perspective, here's a pretty decent summation from the main Q supporter on Conspo.

The QAnon movement has been a "big tent" phenomenon that manages to group all kinds of diverse theories into the Grand Unified Conspiracy Theory. So the movement has relatively mainstream "Dems are trying to undermine Trump" Breitbart types, lots of "Trump is preparing the world for the Second Coming" Evangelical types, and then all kinds of anti-vaxxers, anti-5G, Ancient Aliens fans, healing crystal, NESARA/GESARA (global economic reset) believers, etc. There's a wide body of QAnon pundits on social media, some of whom are full-time commentators funded by crowdsourcing, all with different gimmicks and focuses, but generally they avoid stepping on each others' toes.

Enter Austin Steinbart: Austin is a 29yr old married (for now) guy who owns his own small IT business in the Phoenix area (not doxxing, he's a public figure). By early 2020 Austin was a relatively minor Q pundit, mostly among the lines of the Tom Clancy-esque faction, talked a lot about how Trump is being impeded by the CIA and FBI because he won't let them pull shady shenanigans, and soon he'll purge them. Then around spring 2020 just as Covid was kicking off, Austin suddenly announces that he himself is Q. Well, sort of, in that he claims "Q" is Austin but in the year 2050, when he's commander of the US Space Force, and is using "quantum computing" to post on 8chan from the future. According to him, all the other Q pundits are "pharisees" and liars, and the whole Q community should come over to follow his leadership. I debated describing this as a Martin Luther parallel, but really he's more like the Mormon founder, Joseph Smith, in that he's claiming every other sect is a lie and he has sole access to The Real Truth.

Those who believe Austin is Q point out that Q has posted a specific bible verse, and mention of a specific band, which Austin has also posted. Q believers are big into "proofs" and the Austin set doesn't have a ton for their guy, frankly. And Austin himself claims that his private high school was a DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) covert operation, and at age 17 he was recruited by DIA as a covert operative for a mission to Cuba, and so on and so on until all the top espionage leaders and Trump himself chose Austin to lead the Q operation.

Detractors of Austin point out that the dude shows all kinds of signs of mania, grandiose thinking, narcissism, etc. Medical speculation is further fueled by the publicly-acknowledged fact that Austin's parents pressured him to go to a brain scanning clinic to see what's up in his noggin... where Austin used his 1337 IT skillz to hack into their system and record a bunch of brain scans of celebrities (mostly former NFL players), which he videoed on his phone and posted on his website. At this point, Austin began to brag online about all the illegal things he was doing, and citing them as evidence he's a covert federal intel operative, because clearly a normie doing such things would be arrested. And then the FBI arrested him. Turns out the clinic had contacted Austin's webhost and got his site taken down for revealing stolen medical info, and Austin had tried to extort his webhost, sent threatening emails, and encouraged his supporters to flood their email and phones, leading to substantial extra expenses and lost business.

Following his arrest, Austin continued to claim (including to the FBI and the court) that he's a covert agent and immune to prosecution, and somehow managed to finagle house arrest, and despite being banned from the internet he used a flip-phone to routinely conduct interviews with conspiracy streaming shows. He eventually got his internet privileges back, and while still on house arrest he reached out to his small faction asking for volunteers to help him make a movie, to be released in October, about how he's Q and all the insider info he knows. So a bunch of internet randos crashed on the floor of his living room for a number of weeks, during which time a number quickly bailed and announced online that Austin is basically running a cult. And then it all got shut down anyway because Austin got found with a rubber wang full of fake pee that he was going to use to cheat on his house arrest drug test, so he's back in federal custody currently.

So that's a very brief (relative to the overall depth of the story) rundown of Austin and his following. So on to the popcorn as Austin sectarians feud with mainstream Q believers and both get sharply criticized by r/Conspiracy posters who are willing to accept Flat Earth and Holocaust Denial, but draw the line at Q. Here's a brief rundown from Austin's coming out in March, up to this week:


Posted by at
Labels:

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)