“TRUST THE PLAN.”
– Q

QAnon is the fictitious government insider that was primarily active during Donald Trump's presidency, spreading a fringe theory christening him as savior against the deep state, and incidentally encouraged domestic terrorism according to the FBI¹⁾²⁾ and U.S. Congress.³⁾

The conspiracy assumes that an evil, satanic, deep state cabal is fully responsible for everything bad in the world, from economic inequality⁴⁾ to international pedophile rings,⁵⁾ and uses identity politics to keep us distracted. In response, the Statesian people allegedly elected Trump to drain the swamp,⁶⁾ which stopped a violent, patriotic coup d'état from happening if Clinton assumed office instead.⁷⁾

With Trump in office, the NSA was flipped to spy onto the cabal instead,⁸⁾ and he allegedly set up the “Q” clearance division to spread awareness of this threat with a movement dubbed “The Great Awakening”. Theoretically, Trump would've initiated “The Storm” which describes a military dictatorship enabling the arrest and/or execution of high-profile cabal members with military tribunals.

In the beginning, Q surfaced as an anonymous user on 4chan's /pol/ board on October 28, 2017,⁹⁾¹⁰⁾ yet managed to stand out as they were patient¹¹⁾ and let the thread devolve into confirmation bias.¹²⁾ The identity remained anonymous until November 9, 2017 when Q adopted a tripcode.¹³⁾ From there, Q began to show up in 8chan's /pol/¹⁴⁾ and /cbts/¹⁵⁾ boards, later abandoning 4chan on December 15, 2017.¹⁶⁾

Following the InfoWars spotlight on December 24, 2017,¹⁷⁾ the identity was hijacked on January 6, 2018 into the hands of Ron Watkins.^{18)19)20)21)22)} The story is that /cbts/'s owners noticed that Q's hashed IPs weren't lining up since Ron was spoofing it,²³⁾²⁴⁾ so Ron immediately intervenes,²⁵⁾ then makes Q claim /cbts/ is compromised,²⁶⁾ leave,²⁷⁾ and never lets Q revisit old boards.²⁸⁾

Q's writing style naturally changed over the next two years,²⁹⁾³⁰⁾ but Q's gospel spread unusually far across the online world. However, after 8chan went offline for 3 months, some onlookers noticed that Q wanted to stay when everyone else left.³¹⁾ When people pointed this out, we simply got dialogue of Ron and his puppet insisting that a new board would magically solve all of 8kun's problems with one neat trick.³²⁾³³⁾

Then on November 2, 2020, the 2020 U.S. presidential election took place and Ron Watkins also claimed he'd resign from 8kun.³⁴⁾ As for the election, Trump prematurely declared his victory³⁵⁾ and took advantage of the fact that the mail-in ballot delay would gradually reveal Biden as the winner, enabling Trump to begin a wild goose chase of disputing the disputing the election results.³⁶⁾³⁷⁾

During this, since Q's existence relied on Trump's presidency, Ron actively joined in the effort to dispute the results.^38)39)40) As time passed, he had the insurrection act on his mind⁴¹⁾ and later showed support for storming the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.⁴²⁾⁴³⁾ Q didn't say much, closing the year off with four posts, linking a "We're Not Gonna Take It" video⁴⁴⁾ on December 8, 2020⁴⁵⁾ before going radio silent.

After Biden's inauguration, the Q community had largely dispersed, while the ones who remain have mostly splintered into their own paths in a post-Trump world. Q's legacy is mostly reflected by the only two female politicians who showed support for Q and won,⁴⁶⁾ Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert.⁴⁷⁾⁴⁸⁾ As for the Watkins family, neither of them amused the idea of Q returning.

Out of nowhere, somebody on Truth Social began posing as “Q” in February 2022⁴⁹⁾ and they've gained so much attention⁵⁰⁾ that the original “Q” finally came out of hibernation on June 24, 2022.⁵¹⁾ However, this reboot “Q” had issues. On June 29, 2022, “Q” forgot to post with a Tor ID, revealing that “ID: 422ccc” was just arguing in defense of Jim Watkins, but the IDs were quickly changed to cover the fact.⁵²⁾⁵³⁾

The reboot didn't last long and “Q” of 8kun left a cryptic message on November 27, 2022⁵⁴⁾ before heading back into radio silence. Despite this, “Q” of Truth Social remains active.

• I didn't plan on making a QAnon article, but I felt obligated to after a brokered programming host used a local radio station's airwaves and uttered well-known QAnon slogans in the morning.
  • The funniest thing about Q is how they simply avoided the beatdown that tripcode users normally receive by not immediately responding to critics who would've called it a LARP.⁵⁶⁾
• The original Q claimed that Lynn Forester de Rothschild using the Philadelphia Eagles chant, Fly, Eagles Fly,⁵⁷⁾ referred to Bill Clinton's Secret Service code name of “Eagle”.⁵⁸⁾
  • The post-hijack Q would only comment on Robert Kraft's alleged human trafficking story⁵⁹⁾ and Q's only non-Kraft reference to the Superb Owl was in the 2020 offseason.⁶⁰⁾
• Q supporters were often apart of existing conspiracy groups⁶¹⁾ and the U.S. religious right.⁶²⁾
• At some point, the community managed to expand on how threads were humorously called “breads”, using “bakers” for thread starters (OP) or moderators and “breadcrumbs” for thread replies.
• Jim Watkins made a “Disarm the Deep State” Super PAC in February 2020^63)64)65) which flopped.
• The first major QAnon convention, “QCon Live!”, was hosted in Scottsdale, Arizona on October 17, 2020,⁶⁶⁾ and Jim Watkins was reported to be in attendance by multiple sources.^67)68)69)70)
  • In the post-Trump world, news sources would attach the QAnon label to the “For God & Country” conventions, held in Dallas⁷¹⁾⁷²⁾ and Las Vegas,⁷³⁾⁷⁴⁾ attempting to compete with CPAC.⁷⁵⁾
• The Japanese QAnon following,⁷⁶⁾⁷⁷⁾ dubbed “JAnon” (Jアノン), have been linked to cults such as: Happy Science, the Unification Church (“Moonies”), and Falun Gong.^78)79)80)
  • “Trump” → “Toranpu” (トランプ) → “Tora-san” (トラさん) / “🐯-san” (🐯さん) → “tora3”.⁸¹⁾
  • On September 11, 2021, both Donald Trump and Shinzo Abe attended the Rally of Hope,⁸²⁾⁸³⁾ a conference that was organized by Unification Church leader Hak Ja Han.

• /qresearch/ on 8kun - The community and board that QAnon last made a post in.
  • qanon.pub and qalerts.app - The primary QAnon post aggregators.
• greatawakening.win - QAnon Reddit clone. Formerly /r/greatawakening on Reddit.