The Quiet Damage: QAnon and the Destruction of the American Family

by Jesselyn Cook

The last words they’d exchanged were in a pair of jaw-dropping emails Emily had sent just before Christmas of 2020, seven weeks after Adam had voted to elect Joe Biden as president of the United States. Over forty-four seething lines, she broke her son’s heart and spit in his face. “PAIN IS COMING FOR YOU,” she promised, “AND YOUR BELOVED CHINA JOE, FRAUD OBAMA AND HIS MAN WIFE MICHAEL.” She called Adam a “monster,” a “huge disappointment,” and an “utter embarrassment.” He was no child of hers, she declared, just a “spoiled evil brat” who deserved to suffer for his choices. She claimed that he wouldn’t survive the bombshells that would soon shatter his faux reality—that he’d end up like Dan. “Shed my DNA,” Emily wrote, twisting the dagger. “I am DONE WITH YOU.”

Under QAnon’s expansive umbrella are two camps of people; combined, they double the population of California. In the first are the true believers, who think Donald Trump and a mysterious government insider known as “Q” are (perpetually) in the final stages of a treacherous, unseen battle to liberate humanity from “the Deep State,” a satanic cabal of globalist elites who rule the world from the shadows while buying and selling children to rape, mutilate, and eat. (One such believer was elected—and reelected—as House representative of Georgia’s Fourteenth Congressional District; several have proven violent, even murderous.) And in the second, much larger camp, which emerged over the pandemic as QAnon ideology blended insidiously into mainstream discourse, are those who embrace some or all of the core conspiracy theories but don’t identify with the movement. The distinction doesn’t matter much, frankly. In 2021, a staggering 15 percent of Americans agreed that the government, media, and financial worlds were “controlled by Satan-worshipping pedophiles,” polling found. By late 2023, that number had rocketed to 25 percent. This is not a passing chapter of the culture wars,

For many, the allure is less about what it makes them think than how it makes them feel.

watched. There was a lot to digest that was outside his wheelhouse. But something about it seemed different from other conspiracy theory proselytizing he’d seen. It felt special—exciting, somehow, like he was in on a secret. He couldn’t think of any reason why the video’s creator would lie. What could they stand to gain from making all of this up? There was no sales pitch, no catch; it just seemed like an earnest message for anyone open-minded enough to listen.

Its power was in its populist allure and its relative digestibility. Belying the sheer absurdity of QAnon as a whole, it swept viewers into a gripping tale of conspiracy theories built around nuggets of truth, while saying nothing of baby-eating, faked deaths, or clones. Those elements, for Matt, would come later.

Researchers would later find a positive correlation between conspiracy theory belief and depression—most prevalent, interestingly, among the relatively privileged: white people, high-income earners, and those with college educations. Psychological stress as well as state (situation-based) and trait (personality-based) anxiety were also determined to be precursors, suggesting a circumstantial vulnerability in some cases rather than a mental disorder.

Emotional trauma had the power to permanently alter the brain: It could cause the amygdala—the alarm center controlling emotional responses such as fear, anxiety, and aggression—to become overactive. Social isolation and loneliness, as well, were known to fuel hypervigilance toward perceived threats, in addition to cognitive decline.

Nita also speculated that Emily’s rage, sensitivity, and victim complex, as described by Jessica, could be signs of narcissistic personality disorder, a condition that was typically present to some degree from childhood or adolescence but could become more apparent later in life as a delayed response to trauma. Narcissism was one of very few personality traits that was a robust predictor of conspiracy theory thinking. To narcissists, espousing such views offered validation that people had it in for them, scapegoats upon which to blame their own misfortunes, and a coveted sense of uniqueness.

Dale, part of the Silent Generation, and Doris, on the cusp of being a Baby Boomer, belonged to the fastest-growing group of users on Facebook. The number of seniors on the site nearly doubled between 2012 and 2019. A concerning feature of their online behavior quickly became apparent: They were consuming and disseminating information with relatively limited skepticism—in fact, they were four times more likely than “digital natives” to share fake news. This heightened vulnerability to online falsehoods could be due in some cases to cognitive aging, researchers determined, but also, to a limited understanding of how social media platforms operate behind the scenes. A third of “digital immigrants” over sixty-five believed that the news articles in their Facebook feeds were selected by a group of company employees, just as a team of editors would decide which stories to put in the Times. Only 18 percent were aware that it was done by machine-learning programs curating posts specifically for them.

As the pandemic intensified, anons co-opted the slogan “Save Our Children,” the name of a political coalition formed in 1977 by Anita Bryant, a white American singer and mother, in her crusade against gay schoolteachers, whom she believed to be potential child molesters.

The allure of conspiracy theories transcended race and other demographic boxes: At a basic level, they appealed to people with a sense of powerlessness—perceived or valid.

Minority communities, where feelings of powerlessness were often deeply entrenched from generations of acute, legitimate oppression, were ripe for conspiracy theory thinking stemming from rational hypervigilance: an adaptive, deceive-me-once type of learned suspicion to avoid further suffering.

That was perhaps the greatest gift QAnon could offer its adherents. Man’s desire for meaning was intrinsic and intoxicating; famed psychiatrist Viktor Frankl had called it the primary motivation of human existence. It was also elusive—only one in four American adults had a strong sense of life purpose—and the pursuit had led some down dark paths. Extremist groups, cults, and many a religious grifter were masters in making their followers feel righteous and special. Conspiracy theories could do the same: By identifying villains to unite against, they gave believers a chance to feel like they were on the right side of history.

an apophany: a Rorschachian conclusion drawn from dots that have no business being connected. Apophenia is a natural phenomenon; the human brain is hardwired to scan for patterns, even where they don’t exist. It’s also a bedrock of conspiracy theory thinking, wherein illusory patterns perceived in random noise are held up as evidence of nefarious activity.

And when people’s firmly held beliefs are challenged—particularly those tied to their sense of self—the brain reacts the same way it would to a physical threat, ready to defend those beliefs as if they were part of the body. Adrenaline courses through the bloodstream, the heart races, and the prefrontal cortex, the brain’s logic center, is functionally compromised. It can make people impulsive and irrational. Cruel, even.

Research suggests that harboring grievances—whether they stem from real or perceived offenses—actually makes people feel good. Brain-imaging studies have revealed that feeling aggrieved, and in turn, desiring retribution, stimulates the same neural reward-processing circuitry as narcotics. Such desire could manifest in a retaliatory act as simple as Emily rage-tweeting at Biden, or as extreme as laying siege to the U.S. Capitol. But feeling wronged and merely thinking about that release of revenge, perhaps by fantasizing about the Storm, can trigger an intoxicating rush of dopamine—which, incidentally, can make people more prone to seeing illusory patterns, a cornerstone of conspiracy theory thinking.

Religious belief was significantly positively correlated with conspiracy theory belief, attributed by experts to the service of common psychological needs (certainty, purpose, community) and shared underlying elements (grand narratives, a righteous mission, conviction in the unseen). And while believers of QAnon theories represented only a small minority of Christians overall, they accounted for nearly one in four white Evangelicals; the majority, also, were supporters of Christian nationalism.

She was dead wrong. His first inclination was to tell her exactly that. But leaning into Dr. Handley’s guidance, he chose to lead with empathy and to create a path for them to work together, not against each other. “Look, first of all, I get why you’re worried about this. You want us to be safe from harm. So do I,” he said, intentionally echoing her concern to show her that he understood where she was coming from. “And I hear what you’re saying about Bill Gates: You don’t trust him. He’s an extremely powerful person, and it’s good to be skeptical. So let’s make sure we’ve got our facts straight here, okay? In that CNBC report, I thought he was saying that his investment into vaccines had a twenty-to-one return in economic benefits for the world—not that he was profiting himself. Maybe I misunderstood, though. Can we double-check?”

Effective strategy

“I could teach you all the media literacy tips in the world,” says Dr. Joanne Miller, an expert in political psychology and a professor at the University of Delaware, “but if you’re feeling uncertain; if you’re feeling a lack of control; if you’re feeling socially isolated; if you’re feeling helpless and searching for answers, because answers will make you feel better, then media literacy won’t help you. You’ll throw it all out the window.” Miller’s years of research into the motivations behind conspiracy theory belief had been of growing interest to me as I worked through the book. She’d found that people with a weaker ability to “bounce back” from adversity were more susceptible, supporting her understanding that conspiracy theories were, for many, a coping mechanism—a more easily accessible and ostensibly less harmful one than others, like drugs or gambling. “If you really, really want to believe, then you’ll find a way, regardless of facts and evidence,” Miller says. “So the question is: Why do so many of us want to believe right now?”