Perhaps this helps to explain why fact-checking seems so pitiably unequal to our moment. Yes, unlike a genuine game, QAnon followers assert claims about the real world, and so they could, in theory, be verified and falsified. It isn’t all confirmation bias — surprise is still possible: The Pizzagate believer who in 2016 brought a rifle to a D.C. pizza place to rescue child sex slaves from a ring believed to involve Hillary Clinton was genuinely shocked that the building didn’t have a basement. But ARGs can keep going because there are a myriad of possible solutions to puzzles in the game world. Debunking only ever eliminates one small set of narratives, while keeping the master narrative, or the idea of it, intact. For QAnon, or contemporary witchcraft, or #TheResistance, or Infowars, or the idea that all elements of American life are structured by white supremacy, one deleted narrative barely puts a dent in what people are drawn to: the underlying world picture, the big story.