You have to have been alive for a certain length of time for most of what the Q posts say to make sense. Most younger people, say 20 and below, simply have no frame of reference since they haven't usually seen the corruption up close and personal. Rather, they are the generation who has been groomed to carry out the corruption.

Most old people are not wise. Age does not cause Wisdom.

I don't personally know anyone who's deep into Qanon, so I assume it's mostly a psyop.

That said, the reason something like QAnon would catch on is not particularly mysterious. We know that there is a child sex trafficking problem being covered up by the establishment. In lieu of reliable reporting, people are left to speculate amongst themselves.

The boomers that tend to be doomers are often filled with a lifetime of regret, they don't want to take accountablity for their lives and themselves so they find comfort in some grand plan of lizard people eating babies are oppressing them, it gives them something to do and for the large part they're just harmless, can be annoying but harmless

I have an aunt that's on this trip, Q-anon, sovcit nonsense, talking about 5th amendment, like bitch we South African, our 5th has to do with national election procedures shut you mouthole talking about im not driving im travelling and quoting the magna carta as if it as some magical properties

There's a great vid on YouTube by Munecat that dives into it too

There are volumes written on the attraction of conspiracy theories and the attraction to them. It isn't just older people either. Being "in the know" or "knowing something most people do not know" is pretty common. Its the same emotion that drives people to dive into many topic areas.

I was very fascinated by conspiracy theories in my teens. I lost interest in my twenties due to more important things. I got busy. My guess is that older folks just have more time and go down rabbit holes.

The other thing I have noticed more since covid is that since the trust in "establishment voices" has cracked, and for good reason. People that used to believe the news and "respected voices" no longer do. But instead of just being skeptical in general, many fall for straight up scam artists that are using conspiracy to sell.

Honestly, after what has been exposed in the last few years I'm not surprised to see people fall for crack pot stuff. But you have to remember. What is a theory in your eyes might actually be fact. Facts you don't have access to. All conspiracy theories are theories until they are proven.

I was called a crackpot at work for saying the NSA and feds were sucking up all internet traffic after 9/11. Until Snowden exposed it to the world. There are many such examples we could probably all cite.

The media even promotes conspiracy theories. Remember the Trump Russia stuff? Most have forgotten that most of the stories from 2016 that were pushed until 2020 have been debunked.

Its hard to determine fact from fiction. Most people seem to lack the ability to use logic. Its why I try to tune out a lot of the noise.

Probably it’s retired old people or stay at home moms. Too much time on their hands, spent reading online conspiracies

I say this as someone who is actually pretty sympathetic with the rightwing conspiracy theorists, but has observed my fellows fall for too many nothing burgers

Naive, wishful thinking is a real killer, but in most cases not in a totally rigged, temporary system like we have had these decades...

The next problem is that most have very little experience in building up, assessing and utilizing mental models, especially in concert when they might be mutually exclusive.

While even some of the wildest theories out might be good tautologies that explain everything within their purview very well they might still not fit in well with others, and will certainly lack the flexibility to merge into an even larger picture that explains even more.

Mental universes like this particular one of course can't even withstand the simplest probing and scrutiny, and they end up ballooning with even more fanciful explanations of any aspect that does not make sense at all when viewed from the outside.

Flat earth is really the prime example, but very easy to disprove of course. Hell, I've seen the bloody curvature crossing an ocean solo myself! That does not stop them, of course... ;-)

When it comes to the whole Q thing and basically anything in politics and especially hidden actions it all becomes way harder to handle because it is not about simple physics and logics, normally it belongs in the domain of human behaviour and psychology, which of course is far more complex and prone to exceptions, uncharted territory and outdated models because of tech.

What I do find fascinating is that so many relatively wild theories match and overlap very well these days, and often they are driven by people who seemingly has a lot to lose and not much to gain by sharing what the know or have experienced!

Not only old people. Many young people and many bitcoiners believe in conspiracies too.

Wisdom is knowing there are things you cannot possibly know.

Conspiracy deniers are an egotistical bunch living in a fragile realty, their only source of comfort is to deny the existence of things beyond their comprehension.

Conspiracy deniers trust the media that created the term conspiracy theorists and insists there is no such conspiracy.

Conspiracy deniers believe the media when it tells them Q is a larp and everything that seems weird is really just a coincidence.

There is no "q-anon", there is Q, and there are anons.

Here is another conspiracy:

For those to whom "conspiracy" or "conspiracy theory" is synonymous with "whacky idea that is obviously false" or "untrue by definition" I'd recommend going through the findings of the Church Committee. It was an investigation that got carried out in 1975 that opened the CIA's book at least in part. We don't know what they managed to hide successfully but what was revealed is quite significant. There's lots of conspiracy theories that are untrue, don't misunderstand me. But conspiracies are actually quite common in the history of human affairs.

A recent example from the saga kicking of this dacade: social media companies like facebook, google, twitter conspired with the USA federal government to censor speech contradicting the government sponsored narrative of the day. Conspiracies to censor dissident speech continues on other topics like the causes of the conflict in ukraine. And it doesn't end with censorship. There's also quite a bit of lawfare.

But again: history is full of conspiracies. Conspiracy is simply a particular form of humans working together. Of humans making agreements with eachother to coordinate their actions. This is very natural behaviour for humans.

It should also be noted that there's a predictable cycle the PR on these things goes through from "It's not happening. That's a conspiracy theory" to "It's happening and that's a good thing, even a necessary thing" That's what happened with talk about these various international groups like Bilderberg, Trilateral Commission, WEF, bohemian grove etc. For decades the existence of these sorts of groups was denied but now we're at the point where it's a good thing and we need global governance etc. Ignore as long as you can. Then deny it as long as you can. Then act as though you never denied it and spin a positive story about it. That doesn't seem like a very wholesome pattern to me and it may indicate the existence of a conspiracy.

I should also note finally that what could be called conspiracies can actually be acted out with all the best intentions and so-called noble lies. You see we've got to conspire because if we're open about what we want to do then the people won't accept it but the people don't know what's good for them so we've got to take matters into our own hands and conspire to save us all. This kind of use of evil means in pursuance of what are seen as good ends does happen sometimes. In my view these kinds of people more often than not pave the way to hell with good intentions when they act in that manner. Then there's also the capacity of humans for self-deception and maintaining self-serving lies. Know thyself. It is difficult.

This might have been true centuries ago where human-brain was the most common storage device (so if you lived longer, you obtained more memories and knowledge).

Perhaps I'll get dragged here for this, but It's honestly not just old people, but frankly many on the political right seem to embrace many conspiracy theories. Left isn't immune either, but observationally I think we can agree the "right" seems to peddle more conspiracy theories, and not only Q, but they all seems to have some interconnectedness with people believing multiple and weaving stories to make them fit together. I suppose as you get older and wealthier, you tend to become more "conservative". Its a weird venn diagram of people believing in Q, flat earth, vaxx, etc. I'm talking about the group on the political right that is caught up in culture war issues, instead of economic and fiscal issues.

It all comes down to a lack of critical thinking, misunderstanding the burden of proof and being able to recognize bias. The person/people making the outlandish claim are the ones that need to provide proof, it's not on me to prove people aren't eating pets, it's on those claiming people are eating pets. Saying "do your own research" is not proof lol, and even one half baked example is not "proof". The reason it's so prevalent is that an entire media and propaganda apparatus (Fox News, CNN, etc) exists to push fear and blow up individual scenarios into larger issues than they are, because fear causes emotion, and emotion disrupts critical thinking. It's advertising/marketing 101. Generations of people have now grown up in a confirmation bias echo chamber and bubble, where they peddle only things they already are susceptible to believe because they didn't know how to properly question nor do they understand how burden of proof works. I suppose it boils down to education, and accepting some stranger on 4Chan, or Twitters statements, without scepticism, as facts over peer reviewed research and Occam's Razor.

Most conspiracy theories resonate well with the oldies.

Something I have understood over the years is that people are gullible or not, and regardless of their level of academic instruction. Just by looking at religions you can understand this, evangelicals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Catholics, Jesuits, Mormons, Christians, evangelical Christians and I am sure there are other branches, they are people who hate each other, they do not get along with each other, they criticize each other and in the end it is assumed that they all worship the same invisible being. My thought on this is that human beings have always needed to believe in something more than just what they can see. In ancient times, people believed in and worshipped the forces of nature, among other deities related to all kinds of things. At a certain point in history, they evidently sought to change that and centralize religion, and that was the point when people began to be controlled through religion, telling you what to do and say, how to dress, and above all who to worship or from whom to expect favors, favors that don't come unless you dedicate your life to paying homage to the imposed doctrine. And so, others then shaped the game in their own way and the rest of the derived religions emerged.

All of this leaves us in the present century, where even though information flows freely in some places, there are still others where that information is censored or modified at will to influence in one way or another. Many people choose to believe in other things, I for example choose to believe that religion and divine creation is a farce and that our origin is something more mysterious and that the information about the true origin of the planet and the first human civilizations was erased so that another story could be told. And in the end each person decides to believe in what seems best to them, some out of disbelief, others out of conviction, and others because the pieces fit together and they see the world from another perspective.

Q was made for that age group to bring out more fear in their everyday lives