How did you get in to Q in the first place?

I had been DEEP into conspiracy for about 8 years. Had very recently been down the ufo paranormal rabbit hole so when Q really took off midterm for trump I “did my research” and fell right into it.

Do you mind describing what you thought research was and how you’d go about doing it?

Oh research is just going down rabbit hole links and back alley corners of the net. Let’s not kid ourselves and think it’s anything fancy. Unfortunately an ignorance of the world and overconfidence in one’s own critical thinking leads to believing in stupid shit

Did being part of Q make you feel important? Like did you have a small group of other Q’s you talked to that you considered friends so you felt needed and that it was important to figure out “the truth” with your community, like you were apart of something

Oh absolutely! I totally got a massive ego boost out of it. Come to think of it, Q would often stroke our egos, saying in his posts that we were humanities last hope, his autistic cyber soldiers. What idiots.

Did you slowly decide that you didn’t believe it, or was it a quick process? What do you think helped you get out?

It was a gradual dawning after I realized many of my Qultist friends had no idea how computers operate. It’s NOT easy realizing you’ve been conned, been a rube, been taken in. I had recently been questioning lifelong fundamental Christianity, so I’d been in the mood to question my beliefs including my cherished conspiracy theories

What was your epiphany?

Honestly? It was a couple of posts made by Q on the chans that seemed highly suspicious because of how ignorant they were of technology. Q posts often had weird syntaxe as a kind of co

• • • Kind Of [writing like this] as if there was [a secret] in using brackets To Tell The Truth.

One morning Q claimed to have shut down 7 FBI super computers (named after the seven dwarves no less) via satellite hacking and all the rabid fans ate it up, claiming that “their internet was running a little bit faster)

FBI Super Computer ::SLEEPY::[[OFFLINE]]

alarm bells went off in my head because, come on, that’s not how any of this works. Using elementary school syntax form To SpeLl a [[Secret Code ]] felt fishy, and claiming your email in rural Montana loaded faster because seven super computers got shut down by remote hacking was a bridge too far for me. I realized that most of the Q believers I had seen were Boomers with no idea how technology works or people my age with no idea how computers operate. That day, I Googled Q Anon Debunked and got out.

You said you googled ‘qanon debunked’ to get out. did you do research on it before, or why didn’t you?

When I Googled that it was with a lens critical of my own beliefs. The reason I fell for pizzagate et all was because I was critical of other people’s beliefs. And I was a fucking idiot, ngl. I think most people in conspiracy theories have poor critical thinking skills. I’m a huge fan of skepticism post Conspiracy theory shit

Do Qanon believers believe everything that’s posted on there? What if some posts contradict each other?

Yeah seems like they swallow everything. See like a lot of cults, it’s a prophet complex. Once you Buy In to the overall idea, you’re less likely to question when two things don’t add up, or to cover for own belief you justify and defend the flaw.

Is it really that people are gullible or is it that technology has gone so crazy apeshit via social media and the internet that no one knows what to believe anymore

Oh it’s gullibility and lack of knowledge of how tech works. That’s why so many boomers fall for it.

Would mind explaining the need to constantly speak about your beliefs and bringing them up even when it’s destroying relationships?

When people are in a cult and convinced they have THE TRUTH about life the universe and everything they often feel the need to save others by spreading their ideas. So it can come from a sort of compassionate zeal, and yes that was me though I was pretty bad at it.

The phrase “I did/have done my research” is so frustrating to read from conspiracy theorists. Is this a phrase that’s echoed on message boards, encouraged for people in these communities to use? Do they actually believe that YouTube videos and random internet holes qualify as “research”? In your experience, what kind of critical thinking skills do people in these communities possess?

Yes they use the phrase unironically. Yes they are over confident. It stems from a distrust of authority as do sooo many cults and theories. In my experience, very little.

How does one end up taking an anonymous post that seriously in the first place?

I…. Don’t know.

It sounds like you dropped all the rabbit hole conspiracy theories at once. Did you realize something about your brain’s “wiring” that makes you vulnerable to conspiracy theories?

I did drop it all at once. Yeah. It was massively humbling to realize I’d been a sucker. I think a huge part of the problem was growing up fundamentalist Christian. Theories about evil evolution, science denial and The End of The world rapture return of Christ stuff is all pretty crazy too. There’s a strong link between the two

How did your fellow conspiracy theorists react to your change?

When I quit, about two years ago, I was so embarrassed I didn’t really make any public statements. My fellow conspiracy nuts were all online though, as thankfully nobody in my family believed it at the time.

Did anyone accuse you of treason, calling you a “government plant” or a “compromised asset” who was secretly sent to infiltrate and destroy their “movement?”

Haha no. If I’d been more vocal about leaving it might have happened. Everything must fit into the jigsaw worldview narrative

Do you think Qanon will become a global problem for democracies?

I have been ex Q for a couple years. When I found out how much crazier shit the theory has gotten I was blown away bc when I left I was certain it would be all over soon.

At this point the problem isn’t Q, it’s gullible people who lack critical thinking skills and gain a massive ego boost in thinking they have secret in that the sheeple don’t know. So who knows?

What do the rest of us get wrong about Qanon supporters? I think when people like you are open about this type of stuff we tend to ask questions that confirm or reaffirm our assumptions but what are the rest of us missing that enables Q to connect with so many people , anything you can think of?

Great Q. Pun intended. Uh, well I’m not anymore, but even when I was a Qtip and Trump supporter I personally was not a racist white supremacist, and not all Trumpers are. Although I also tend to think that maybe those people just left the movement.

How do you feel about these other conspiracies now that you’ve debunked Q? Still want to believe or sworn them all off?

I left it all behind when Q fell. Life is full of enough wonder and magic that I don’t need to entertain myself with aliens and ghosts

What steps are you taking to ensure you don’t fall for another conspiracy theory?

Having some fucking worldview humility. The problem with fundamentalist religions, cults, and conspiracy theories is they all demonize doubt and are all so absolutely certain that they have the total truth of reality figured out. I hold my beliefs much more humbly now, I acknowledge that I could be wrong.

I read more widely and expose myself to the ideas of others, so that I don’t end up in an echo chamber.

How can we, the family members taken advantage by this whole Q thing infiltrate them and steer them, away from the hella dangerous stuff?

Hmm. I’m honestly not sure I’m much help here, sadly. I had to rescue myself from the madness. I don’t think anyone at the time who tried to deconvert me would have succeeded. When into the conspiracy stuff I tried constantly to convince friends and family and it never worked. When I was out I couldn’t deconvert people. It is never easy to change someone’s mind.

Maybe start by asking them if they have any doubts about Q or if anything in the movement doesn’t make sense? Or better, ask them what conspiracy theories they don’t buy. Love Q but think flat earths are flat heads? Explore with them how their reviled conspiracy theory is obviously fake and maybe that will flex the critical thinking part of their brain that has atrophied.

How has your life improved or devolved since then just based on Q beliefs or lack thereof alone?

People don’t realize how Fucking Scary life is when you think about the world is being run by a cabal of evil demon possessed overlords intent on destroying your way of life. I was always in a dark anxious mood. Now I’m so much happier.

I no longer think the world is run by evil mastermind villains. I realize it’s run by idiots. 😉

Did you have a significant other through any part of the eight years and now? Did they share any beliefs, if so?

I tried to convince my long suffering wife of this, pizzagate, aliens, big foot, Yada Yada. She mostly said that’s nice honey and went back to her crossword. God I don’t deserve her sticking with me.

Now that you’re out of it, what would you say to those still deep in baseless conspiracy, Q or otherwise?

Have the courage to Google “insert conspiracy debunked.” have the courage to take a long look at the evidence against your theory.

Filip Muller, is one of the rare survivors among those condemned to work in the Sonderkommando (The members of Sonderkommando, composed almost entirely of Jewish inmates, were forced under threat of death to do the most disturbing work for the SS: dispose of the countless corpses of the victims killed in the gas chambers.)

Born in 1922 in a small town (Sered) in Slovakia, Muller was only twenty years old when he was brought to Auschwitz in April 1942. After a short while, as punishment, he was assigned to dispose of the corpses of the victims. Many of them had wasted away to skin and bones in Auschwitz or in Polish ghettos; others had died of typhus and other diseases in the concentration camp; some had been brutally beaten and shot by the SS, others were hung to set an example for other prisoners, but by far most—hundreds of thousands of men, women, children and babies–were collectively massacred in the gas chambers.

As Muller recalls, the sadism and brutality of the SS soldiers knew no bounds: “Shouting and wielding their truncheons, like beaters at a hunt, the remaining SS men chased the naked men, women and children into the large room inside the crematorium. All that was left in the yard were the pathetic heaps of clothing which we had to gather together to clear the yard for the second half of the transport”. Here he is describing a gassing:

As people reached the crematorium they saw everything – this horribly violent scene. The whole area was ringed with SS. Dogs barked – machine- guns. They all, mainly the Polish Jews, had misgivings.

They knew something was seriously amiss, but none of them had the faintest of notions that in three or four hours they’d be reduced to ashes.

When they reached the undressing room they saw that it looked like an International Information Centre. On the walls were hooks,and each hook had a number. Beneath the hooks were wooden benches. So people could undress more comfortably, it was said. alise his son lay beneath him”.

And on the numerous pillars that held up this underground undressing room, there were signs with slogans in several languages – “Clean is Good”,” Lice can kill”, “Wash Yourself”, “To the disinfection area”. All those signs were only there to lure people into the gas chambers already undressed – and to the left, at a right angle, was the gas chamber with its massive door.

In Crematoriums II and III, Zyklon B gas crystals were poured in by a so-called SS disinfection squad through the ceiling, and in Crematorium IV and V through side openings. With five or six canisters of gas they could kill around two thousand people.

This so-called disinfection squad arrived in a truck marked with a red cross and escorted people along to make them believe they were being led to take a bath. But the red cross was only a mask to hide the canisters of Zyklon B gas and the hammers to open them.

The gas took about fifteen minutes to kill. The most horrible thing was when the doors of the gas chambers were opened – the unbearable sight – people were packed together like basalt, like blocks of stone. How they tumbled out of the gas chamber.

I saw that several times- that was the toughest thing to take – you could never get used to that. It was impossible.

You see, once the gas was poured in, it worked like this: it rose from the ground upwards. And in the terrible struggle that followed – because it was a struggle – the lights were switched off in the gas chambers. It was dark, no one could see, so the strongest people tried to climb higher. Because they probably realised that the higher they got, the more air there was. They could breathe better. That caused the struggle.

Secondly, most people tried to push their way to the door. It was psychological – they knew where the door was, maybe they could force their way out. It was instinctive, a death struggle. Which is why children and weaker people, and the aged, always wound up at the bottom. The strongest were on top. Because in the death struggle, a father didn’t realise his son lay beneath him”.

And when the doors were opened?

“They fell out. People fell out like blocks of stone, like rocks falling out of a truck. But near the Zyklon B gas, there was a void. There was no one where the gas crystals went in – An empty space. Probably the victims realised that the gas worked strongest there. The people were battered – they struggled and fought in the darkness. They were covered in excrement, in blood, from ears and noses.”

“One also sometimes saw that the people lying on the ground, because of the pressure of the others, were unrecognizable. Children had their skulls crushed. It was awful, Vomit, Blood – from ears and noses, probably even menstrual fluid. I am sure of it.

There was everything in that struggle for life, that death struggle. It was terrible to see. That was the toughest part.”

“It was impossible to save people. One day in 1943 when I was already in Crematorium V, a train from Bialystok arrived. A prisoner on the Sonderkommando saw a woman in the undressing room, who was the wife of a friend of his.

He came right out and told her – “You are going to be exterminated. In three hours you’ll be ashes”. The woman believed him because she knew him. She ran all over and warned the other women – “ We’re going to be killed. We’re going to be gassed”.

Mothers carrying their children on their shoulders did not want to hear that.

Why?

She was my best friend and I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her, regardless of whether I was sexually attracted to her. She’s the best human being I know.

We wanted to live together, we wanted to have kids together, we wanted to wake up next to each other every morning, and we wanted to grow old together. We wanted an exclusive relationship with each other even if sexual attraction was not a driving force in that relationship. I’m not saying that marriage is necessarily the right solution for anyone. For us, it’s just what made the most sense.

How long have you been married?

Six years.

Why did she marry you?

I guess she married me for the same reason I married her — we wanted to be married to each other. Kind of a boring answer, but it’s honestly that simple.

What did you do on your wedding night?

I’m sure this sounds ridiculous, but we ate popcorn and watched movies into the wee hours of the morning, and we both still remember it as being the perfect ending to one of the best days of our lives.

Do you have sex with her?

We do have sex maybe once a month, which she enjoys the usual way and which is more a curious fascination for me than an erotic experience.

How do you get it up for her?

Getting hard usually involves oral foreplay. Most straight guys like to imagine that they couldn’t possibly get hard if a guy was sucking their dick. The simple fact of the matter is that regardless of your sexual orientation, only the most stubborn (or broken) of cocks can ignore skilled fellatio, whether it’s a guy or a girl doing the sucking. You just wouldn’t know, because you’d never let a guy suck your dick in the first place.

The first year, staying hard long enough for her to climax was difficult, so I became a pro with my tongue. Now, I think my body’s just grown accustomed to the whole experience. I can usually stay hard until she’s reached her peak, and half the time I can stay on board until I orgasm myself.

Do you have sex with other men?

Had sex with other men prior to our relationship. Monogamous since we married.

What is your marriage like? Is there any physical connection between you two, or is it strictly emotional?

It’s definitely more emotional but the physical has evolved over the past six years. I accommodate her because I realize she is sexually attracted to me, so we have occasional sex. Sometimes we both climax, sometimes only she does. The first year, it was difficult for me to reach orgasm when we had sex, but it’s gradually become easier.

On that note, let me quickly point out that I don’t think I’ve somehow changed my sexual orientation, and I’m absolutely not in any way trying to advocate ANY kind of ex-gay anything whatsoever. Whoever you are, that’s who you should be. As for me, my natural attraction (i.e. the sexual attraction toward men that I have always had) is the same as it always was. I just choose not to act upon it because I’m committed to the relationship I’m already in. I am highly skeptical of the idea that you can convert yourself from gay to straight, but I do think it’s entirely possible to learn to have a sexual relationship with someone you’re not sexually attracted to, and even to grow to enjoy it.

Do you carry on sexual relationships outside of your marriage? Does she?

No. We’re monogamous with each other, though it’s infrequent, i.e. about once a month (which seems about her ideal frequency). It’s more because I know she enjoys it and I like to do things for her that she enjoys.

What about the rest of the time? Do you, for example, kiss each other in the way a heterosexual couple would a lot?

Sure we kiss. I don’t know, kissing to me is one of those things that’s more an expression of the fact that I love her, not necessarily something meant to simply convey, “I want to fuck you.”

I suspect I would still think that if I were in a relationship with a guy. Kissing (for me, at least) is more an expression of love and intimacy, not just sexual attraction.

Has a threesome ever entered your minds?

We’ve discussed it with each other and mutually decided that it’s a dynamic that neither of us wants to add to our relationship. If other people want to give it a shot, more power to them, but it’s just not for us.

Do you think you are bisexual?

The reason that I don’t feel like that label fits me personally is that it seems to imply a sexual attraction to both men and women. I am not, and have never been, sexually attracted to women.

Do people outside your marriage (like family and friends) know about your “unconventional” marriage?

My parents and siblings know about my past relationships with guys, even though I never declared myself to be gay, and they asked before I got married whether my wife (then my fiancee) knew about this. I told them that she did, and they all left it at that. I figure they must think the relationship is a little unusual, but they’ve all just accepted it and don’t ask questions about the specifics. Most likely my parents figure that I went through a “gay phase” and turned out to be straight, but it really doesn’t matter to me whether they completely understand all the details.

Have you two talked about having children?

Yes. We have a three-year old son and a seven-month old daughter. We both agreed during this past pregnancy that we didn’t want more after these two.

When your kids are old enough to understand, how and when do you plan to explain the situation to them?

We plan to tell them plainly how our relationship works when they’re old enough to learn about sex and relationships. My hope is that they would find the courage to pursue relationships in their own way, whether they’re gay, straight, or something else. They need to follow their own paths, conventional or otherwise.

Was there pressure to live a “normal” life with a wife and kids?

Somewhat. My folks would have been troubled over having an openly gay son, but I suspect they would have gotten over it eventually. As for kids, I always wanted kids. I realize that there are other ways of going about this, but it’s worked out for me just fine in my present scenario.

Do you feel you needed to get married to have the relationship you currently have? Why is that?

I’ll admit that there was part of me that used to worry, in my own immaturity while we were dating, that if I didn’t marry her, someone else would. But that wasn’t the ultimate reason behind getting married. I don’t think it would have been fair to marry her JUST so I could keep my best friend.

So to answer your question, I don’t think that marriage was some necessary ingredient to keep our relationship from failing, but I would say that marriage has caused our relationship to become what it is.

I would also caution anyone in a similar scenario that I think this arrangement could have been a phenomenal disaster if we hadn’t been completely honest with each other about the way we each felt, or if we had been trying to convert me into being straight.

What if you met a man and developed a similar bond?

Couldn’t you have found a similar bond with a man

I just don’t see it happening. I have guy friends, both gay and straight, and they’re great friends, but I don’t have the bond with any of them that I have with my wife. Some of these male friends are quite attractive, but I simply wouldn’t consider having a sexual relationship with any of them because I’m already in a committed relationship.

Are you religious? How does that interact with your sexuality?

I would consider myself spiritual but haven’t really found a religion that I completely identify with. I believe in God, but I also believe that mankind has generally tried to project itself upon God to the point that God has become more of a convenient excuse for how one man wants to mistreat another.

As for how it affects my/our sexuality… If there is indeed a God who, by whatever means, has created mankind, God understands perhaps better than I do exactly what I am, and why I am the way that I am. I recognize that I find myself sexually attracted to other men, but also that the person with whom I fell in love so deeply happens to be a woman.

So regardless of what anyone else might insist that God says, I do my best to be true to who I am, and I figure that in so doing, the God who made me is perfectly capable of reconciling the details.

Are you happy with your choice to be committed to only her?

Yes, I’m happy with my choice and wouldn’t do a single thing differently if I had it to do all over again. I’m speaking for her here, but I’m confident in saying that she feels the same way I do.

I remember the simultaneous high and pain of being hungry and light-headed. One can of diet Pepsi, one loaf of bread on my better days.  Peruse obsessively through foodie magazines, as if looking was eating—without the calories.  Whenever my mother left the house to go shop or run an errand, I ran to my closet, dug out my backpack, filled it with gallons of spring water, and—when the pack was full—grasped the handle of a gallon in each hand and ran or lifted.  I biked. I took 2 hour aerobic classes and returned home for 2 more hours of surreptitious stair-climbing as my parents watched television downstairs.  I got up in the middle of the night to pace the bedroom or stand on tiptoe. I sat on the edge of the seat—determined not to relax and let my fat recline and absorb into my body.  Before I knew it, the only thing I was doing in my life was starving and exercising.

But what I remember most is the “voice” in my head.   I found out later many eating disorder patients experience a halving of their mental state, a “voice” disassociated from the rest of them: an eating disorder “voice”—the friend, the aggressor, the doer, the one trying to help you be continually better—who later turns against you.  The “voice” began nicely enough—with whispers of running just one more mile or shaving down just a few hundred more calories.

My starvation fed the “voice”: As I listened, it grew bigger and meaner.  [ is absolutely right about the ‘constant pounding.’  In my case, the pounding came from this inside ] And there came a point when this whole thinness quest was no longer a “high” point or a gateway to control; it was simply controlling me. There came a point when I cringed against that “voice” because I was tired now.  But I never thought once about resisting, the same way you wouldn’t resist to the demands of someone with a gun to your temple.  I might have felt caged but it was better than saying no, letting go, and falling over a precipice to the unknown and to fat-dom.  I could not imagine anything but death if I stopped listening.  Death was being fat, obscure, and silenced again.  Death was guilt so big I would end up killing myself.  So, there was no other way, really.

I was seventy pounds at five feet three inches the first time I was hospitalized, and under sixty pounds the second time I was hospitalized.  People cringe and shudder when they hear the numbers.  The truth is, if you asked me how sickly and thin I must have looked back then, I couldn’t tell you.

Before I stepped into the shower, I would turn and peer back at two darkened grooves on the center of each buttock.  In hindsight those grooves were probably the bruising of poorly cushioned bones, although a friend recently told me with utmost authority that we do not have butt bones.  But that’s all I remember of how skinny I was.  I looked in the reflection obsessively, but, in my eating-disorder mind, I always saw a normal-sized girl. And, obviously, normal was not okay.

Normal was mediocre; normal was just as bad as fat.  Normal was not the best.  Why bother being anything but the best especially if I was used to being the “best”?  All-or-nothing.  And, so, I actually wanted to look like a poster-child from the starving Middle East or Africa’s.  I fantasized about dropping down to thirty pounds.  But, if thirty pounds was possible, why not fifteen?  I think my final weight-goal was to weigh fifteen pounds.

Like many of the other respondents here, I could go on and on.  The condition ‘eating disorder’ understates so many things about the disorder.  It takes over and takes away everything.  So, I’ll leave it at snapshots:

Hospitalization– being watched in our big ‘glass bowl’ sitting room, monitored via camera feeds in our room– was heaven in a way I couldn’t outwardly admit.  Physical prisons are the Maldives resort escape to your inner prisons.  Your inside warden is still there but, at least, it’s not just you and that warden. It’s you, the warden, and the buffer– the army of nurses and hospital monitors and other watchful eyes that somewhat ‘absolve’ you of your guilt in not feeding the voice.  I remember fearing the day I’d be released.  I never wanted that day to come.

You can complain and wheedle about having to put that pat of butter on your toast, or downing that can of Ensure, but there’s a guilty thrill juxtaposed with horror knowing that you don’t have a choice.

My lips would turn blue with cold by mid morning on a summer’s day because of malnutrition.

My parents told me later they would creep into my room, lift up the covers to check if I was still breathing.  (Various doctors had told them to prepare for the worse– projecting I wouldn’t survive past a year.)

The voice of an eating disordered mind is like that of an abusive boyfriend. You are that cowering shell of a person you once used to be– who believes he is everything to you and that he loves you and you need him in spite of everything he’s done, and you wouldn’t know how to go on or be ‘yourself’ without him.

Recovery from the eating disorder and recovery of your real self is painful, and it takes a long time to feel like you aren’t abjuring some pure, higher-order ideal, that you aren’t being traitorous; you aren’t selling out. You’ll feel all of those things for such a long while and you’ll feel like you are losing your identity. You’ll even feel empty.  You’ll feel like it the whole world had it wrong and should have just let you be.  You’ll feel like gold turning to rusted copper.

An eating disorder is a full-on assault on all battle-fields– the cognitive, the neural, the physical, the emotional, the social.  It is so all-encompassing, nasty, and seductive.  It’s not a neat war-front of parties on opposing sides like it is with you against cancer.  When you are losing you feel like you are winning, and when you are winning you feel like you are losing.