But as Q ramped up his posting, releasing as many as thirty new messages a day, Furber began to reconsider. He noticed a string of what QAnon followers call “Q proofs”—irrefutable evidence that both Q and his ideas are legitimate. Those proofs gave Q credibility among 4chan users in a way that the whistleblowers that preceded him failed to do. Some of those earlier leakers talked about UFOs and eternal life, ideas that were hard to take seriously. But Q’s clues, at least initially, seemed to be grounded in some sort of reality.
