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

by Jesselyn Cook

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, and Emily is no anomaly: There are plenty of intelligent, seemingly normal individuals who have come to see the world through this lens.

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

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.

They were a wall and a world apart, soulmates-turned-roommates in awkward, uncharted territory.

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.

Q: Into the Storm laid bare in visceral detail the extraordinary harm that QAnon had wrought on American democracy. But missing from the film’s six hours—and from the roaring national discourse surrounding the movement—was the quiet damage to families like Matt’s.

At Q’s direction, anons had begun to shed the label of “QAnon,” evidently aware that they could sway more minds without it. But no matter the packaging, Matt knew that QAnon’s insidious influence on American life would endure. More and more, he had been encountering variations of its delusions all over the place, regurgitated by people who would never wittingly align with the movement.