Re: State of the Union - pre/post election & whatever...

Posted:
Thu Jan 14, 2021 2:06 pm
by Macunaima
An excellent article about the QAnon phenomenon by a professional LARP game master. Really well worth a read! Anyone who has ever built a scenario can well relate:
https://medium.com/curiouserinstitute/a ... 0972548be5
Re: State of the Union - pre/post election & whatever...

Posted:
Thu Jan 14, 2021 3:23 pm
by Voice From Limbo
Yow. Interesting and scary read.
Re: State of the Union - pre/post election & whatever...

Posted:
Thu Jan 14, 2021 4:14 pm
by Bronshtein
Good article.
(But have we checked he doesn't eat babies?)
Is QAnon the mutant spawn of Postmodernism? Pease don't discuss.
Re: State of the Union - pre/post election & whatever...

Posted:
Thu Jan 14, 2021 6:35 pm
by Macunaima
Sorry, Bronnie, but I will.
Nope. Seems pretty much me to be the mutant spawn of early modernism — to wit, the protestant great awakenings. The only post-modern thing about it is that is has no central dogma. But QCumbers are very old-school doctrinaire Calvinist types, believing in predestination and secretly coded messages in sacred texts. And their view of the world is resolutely unilateral, self-centered, and absolutist. These are folks who long for absolute certainties and a man on horseback to lead them to them.
Re: State of the Union - pre/post election & whatever...

Posted:
Thu Jan 14, 2021 7:04 pm
by McKinstry
These are folks who long for absolute certainties and a man on horseback to lead them to them.
I strongly doubt Trump could get on a horse without mechanical assistance.
Re: State of the Union - pre/post election & whatever...

Posted:
Thu Jan 14, 2021 8:54 pm
by Bronshtein
Interesting.
The message is that the message is the message.
It shouldn't, can't, be read consistently as a clear overarching narrative.
The only metamessage is self discovery of your own version of the conspiracy.
Each posting and each reading of the symbols and signs discovered are read and discovered anew each time and deciphered differently, hence Trump's 666 finger configuration is to be decoded quite differently from all the other thumb and forefinger touching 'okay' photographs out there. He is not a Satan worshipping paedophile baby eater. (probably).
I can see the idea that worshippers of Q are searching for a certainty. A leader. But the mystical trail leading them to him (and it will be a him even if the Donald turns out only to have been his John the Baptist) is convoluted, uncertain, and largely self created.
Prompts and hints are fine, but I doubt, if you could get a representative sample of the folks on the hill last Wednesday, sit them down and ask them what it is they actually wanted, you would get a consistent desire beyond the certainty and a charismatic leader trope. You would I surmise also get as many different ideas of where they would want to be led as people in the room, maybe more.
This is a rejectionist movement. A rejection of 'now' and 'here', wherever they are, whenever you pin them down.
Postmodernism's unlinking of the chains of conventional narrative structure and causality are perfect godparents for a movement that has no idea of what is really happening from day to day and believes itself both the victim and the nemesis of some great evil that has brought them to their own personal limbo. If only it could find out what that evil was, who is in on it and could persuade all those who don't agree that they are part of the counter narrative to truth rather than the sheet anchor of reality, they, and thus, obviously, the world, would be saved.
Re: State of the Union - pre/post election & whatever...

Posted:
Thu Jan 14, 2021 9:03 pm
by Guest
McKinstry wrote:These are folks who long for absolute certainties and a man on horseback to lead them to them.
I strongly doubt Trump could get on a horse without mechanical assistance.
He promised to march with them to the Capitol, but instead got driven back to the White House.
Re: State of the Union - pre/post election & whatever...

Posted:
Thu Jan 14, 2021 11:00 pm
by Hew Johns
McKinstry wrote:These are folks who long for absolute certainties and a man on horseback to lead them to them.
I strongly doubt Trump could get on a horse without mechanical assistance.
And Trump would probably need some help getting on the mechanically assisted horse.
Re: State of the Union - pre/post election & whatever...

Posted:
Fri Jan 15, 2021 3:03 pm
by Il Segaiolo Pedantesco
Hew Johns wrote:McKinstry wrote:These are folks who long for absolute certainties and a man on horseback to lead them to them.
I strongly doubt Trump could get on a horse without mechanical assistance.
And Trump would probably need some help getting on the mechanically assisted horse.
Are you referring to an
Equicizer or a Sybian?