Ifirst learned about QAnon by accident, around the time of the 2020 Superbowl.
Jennifer Lopez and Shakira had put on this awesome halftime show that had me dancing all over my living room. “I haven’t seen a performance like this since the 90s!” I yelled to my boyfriend over the blaring Latin music.
But soon after, I started seeing odd comments pop up on news threads about how disgusting their performances were, how their dancing was Satanic. I even saw people calling them pedophiles.
Then, my former friend — let’s call her Jane (this is not her real name) — shared a similar sentiment on her Facebook page, followed by a cryptic acronym, “WWG1WGA.” Curious, I Googled this acronym and the QAnon conspiracy popped up, with the saying, “Where We Go One, We Go All.”
I later learned this was the saying of Q followers, and I began researching more about these weird conspiracy theories. I found them fantastical and wrote them off as fringe. “If someone wants to believe that, let them believe it,” I thought to myself.