A 'movement' of stochastic terrorism.

It seems self-evident that the "Q-Anon" online conspiracy crowd began the effort purely as an act of trolling, another nondescript effort to invent the most ridiculous claims a group can think of for the sake of seeing how many of the internet's very dumbest citizens they can goad into believing them.

But it came during a period when the internet's very dumbest citizens were already clinging to whatever flotsam passed within range and, more specifically, during a rise of "alt-right" white nationalism that had already unified many or most of America's dumbest and angriest people. It also came in the wake of a decade of Fox News priming its viewers to believe the most ridiculous claims Fox News could think of, and amid a wider effort by Republican lawmakers to insist that their voters believe the most ridiculous claims every last primary candidate could think of, and while the National Rifle Association was publishing booklets and online videos presenting to gun-toters an array of the most ridiculous claims fellow gun-toters could think of. To make a long story short, America has gotten much, much stupider in these last few years than it has been for a good, long time. Vastly stupider, in fact. It should be considered an epidemic. We might want to begin pondering quarantines.

In any event, we are now at a point where anyone in the world can present themselves as a "Q"-linked sharer of secrets, most of which revolve around Donald Trump, conservatives, and white nationalists as secret illuminati group that is forever this close to taking liberals, the government, and the rest of America down for good. Toward this end they produce rabid content that then makes its way even to the White House's own official petition site. As with online efforts like doxxing and swatting, many of them appear to be attempts to goad lone-wolf figures into acts of terrorism.

“We demand that our Marine Corp be called to OCCUPY THE GETTY, access the elevator to the bunker, and immediately free our children and return them to the surface. Do not allow these monsters to use underground bunkers, under the pretense of ‘continuity of Government’, to rape and eat our children in honor of their Satanic beliefs.”

You will recognize this one as being a direct offshoot of the "Pizzagate" conspiracy, a conspiracy that led to a disturbed and stupid gun-toter firing shots in a Washington-area pizza restaurant based on entirely fabricated alt-right claims that the Clinton-supporting restaurant owner was keeping slave children in the restaurant's (nonexistent) basement. The latest target is the Getty Museum of Art, in Los Angeles. The claim is being peddled by some anonymous sociopath who knows full well it is false for the sake of stoking acts of violence against their designated "foe."