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.

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

reminds me of that quote about people remember how you made them feel more than what you say

It was far easier to believe in antiestablishment conspiracy theories after being conditioned to identify as a victim of the establishment.

others online speculated more generally that some QAnon followers could have a syndrome called “folie à deux” (madness of two) or, in wider contexts, “folie à plusieurs” (madness of several). It involved one person transmitting delusions to another—just like a virus, except not necessarily via in-person interaction—and was most common among those experiencing prolonged social isolation.

forgot this was a thing outside of the context of Joker 2

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.

Narcissism was one of very few personality traits that was a robust predictor of conspiracy theory thinking.

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.

The deeper into the series she got, the more outrageous the claims became, but they were stacking in her mind like building blocks: If this one crazy thing was true, couldn’t this other, slightly crazier thing also be true?

In times of unrest and uncertainty throughout history, people have turned to conspiracy theories—some valid, many not—to make sense of what was happening. Cold War–fueled fears of communist espionage gave rise to McCarthyism. 9/11 was followed by sweeping suspicion that the U.S. government had played a part in the carnage.

interesting

Inside the QAnon labyrinth, opposition was celebrated as validation. So the less Alice trusted the press, the more she trusted the people it debunked and criticized. If the media said someone was wrong, she believed, then he or she must really be onto something.

Compelled in many cases by a sense of maternal duty, women—in particular, suburban white women—were flooding into the movement in such large numbers it gave rise to the term QAmom, reminiscent of the “Mama Grizzlies” of Tea Party populism.

What was the point of trying to make something of herself in a world that was stacked against her?

really sad pov to have but I can see why she got to that point

Black Americans, as well as Hispanics, were in fact statistically more likely than their white counterparts to believe in QAnon’s central claims. And despite its roots in white supremacist lore and antisemitic myths, they were overrepresented in the movement relative to their makeup of the U.S. populace.

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.

What had felt to Matt like an epiphany, however, was in fact 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.

apophany is a new concept for me, super interesting

In QAnon, apophenia was the name of the game. Conclusions were laid out unsupported; anons were then tasked with hunting down proof via independent “research,” instilling in them a feeling of duty—and potentially, accomplishment—while helping to keep the movement alive.

It was a heuristic, self-fulfilling prophecy: If you looked hard enough for a missing puzzle piece, you’d find something that fit. That was part of the thrill.

so sorry but it's giving swiftie

Other times, they’d lie awake beside each other with their heads bowed over their phones, a boss babe and a digital soldier hustling in their own handheld worlds.

this is maybe the single most depressing line in this book. mlm mom and qanon dad :(

In this regard, QAnon was a microcosm of the Trumpian Right: a more extreme and insular product of harmonized lies from right-wing politicians, media figures, and influencers, which were repeated until they sounded believable—a phenomenon known as the “validity effect.”

Standing with the tribe was more important than standing for the truth when one’s ideology became their identity.

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.

A 2018 analysis of the popular r/conspiracy subreddit found that while just 5 percent of its posters actually showed signs of conspiracy theory thinking, they accounted for nearly two-thirds of all comments published there.

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.

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.

She had sacrificed so much at the altar of Q: her reputation, her dignity, her family. Even if she were to miraculously escape QAnon’s clutches, what would she have left to come back to?

this is revisited later in the book but the concept is fascinating to me - for them, this HAS TO be true because if it's not, what did I lose all my friends and family for?

The whole time that he’d been breathlessly defending her—making one excuse after another to justify her hateful delusions—he’d been deluded himself. Emily was an addict, but she was no victim. The deranged, unrecognizable person she’d become was a product of her own choices, and that person didn’t want to be saved.

His mother—the one he knew and loved, and so desperately, excruciatingly missed—was still in there. He just couldn’t break through to her.

can't imagine how awful this would feel

For Alice, to belong was to feel whole. It was less of a want than a need; in fact, it was humans’ most fundamental necessity, outranked only by what was required for subsistence, according to renowned psychologist Abraham Maslow.

In reality, she had shifted—not shed—her confirmation bias. Or, more aptly, her “conformation bias,” a term coined by social psychologist Péter Krekó to describe a driving force of conspiracy theory belief: “the tendency to seek out information that contributes to justifying the defense of one’s own tribe—regardless of veracity.”

Like other conspiracy theorists in the making, Alice was being conditioned to look at the world as a binary: There was good, and there was evil.

There was something uniquely bonding about rallying around a set of forbidden beliefs—especially when it felt like the rest of the world had turned away in disgust.

QAnon adherents and adjacent conspiracy theory thinkers saw themselves as a band of misfits.

As Doris had slipped into QAnon, so too had many other seniors. One in every five Americans who agreed with its core conspiracy theories was over sixty-five years old.

But what all elderly QAnon believers shared, by virtue of their age, was a natural vulnerability to a diminishing sense of “mattering” as their social roles changed.

oh I'm sad

Study after study had found young people to be woefully unable to recognize fake news on the internet, particularly, again, those from disadvantaged backgrounds.

so young people AND old people can't recognize fake news we are so cooked

She knew the statistics all too well: Little Black kids were already around four times more likely than their white peers to end up incarcerated, 20 percent less likely to graduate high school, and 60 percent less likely to finish college. She shuddered to wonder what the odds were for little Black QAnon believers.

The harm this was causing, at his age, could tragically be permanent. In early childhood specifically, intense and frequent or long-term stress, known as “toxic stress,” could literally reshape the still rapidly developing brain, altering its physical architecture in devastating ways.

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.

French polymath Gustave Le Bon had argued in his 1895 treatise on herd dynamics that when uniting around an ideology or belief in pursuit of a shared cause, people could come under an almost “hypnotic” influence, freeing them “from the sense of their insignificance and powerlessness” while also making them intellectually weak, impulsive, and gullible.

“The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste,” he wrote. “Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.”

At long last, his Awakening had come and revealed the truth: He’d been living a delusion.

He was a guy whose life had fallen apart while he was busy worshipping a figment in the sky, a demagogue in the White House, and a troll on the internet.

damn

QAnon, for his daughter, was less a hobby than a religion. It seemed to have already woven itself into the very fibers of her identity.

If Christopher continued to criticize Alice and her beliefs, reinforcing the notion that she was wrong and bad, it would only back her further onto the defensive, where logic stood little chance against anger.

Unless he allowed her to keep her dignity, showing her that she could emerge from QAnon still feeling loved, appreciated, and respected, then why would she ever come out? Inside its walls, she belonged to a community that valued her deeply.

It was deeply embarrassing. Alice realized she had reacted out of emotion, not logic, swept up in the shock value. She wondered how many times she’d done that before.

The parallels between QAnon lore and The Protocols—which fabricated a secret scheme by a cabal of wealthy Jewish elites “to rule the world by manipulating the economy, controlling the media, and fostering religious conflict,” according to the site—were undeniable.

Was it all a fucking lie? It couldn’t be, she decided. Not all of it. There was too much proof, too much evidence. Too much sacrificed on her part.

Accepting that QAnon was a lie meant accepting that there would be no Great Awakening at all, and that the damage she’d done to her life could be permanent.

one of my biggest takeaways from this book