And contrary to popular belief that QAnon followers are mostly old people with too much time on their hands to spend on conspiracy websites, PRRI data shows that 22 percent of those under the age of 50 believe in QAnon conspiracy theories, compared to only 14 percent of seniors. over 65.

“I don’t suspect that belief in conspiracy theories like QAnon will disappear anytime soon,” Melissa Deckman, CEO of PRRI, told WIRED. “Trump supporters in particular are ready to support conspiracies that are not based on any facts at a higher level than the public. Coupled with historic levels of distrust in government and various institutions among many American, the conditions that allow such theories to worsen and even grow are unfortunately not going anywhere anytime soon.

Trump’s return to the White House was widely celebrated by the QAnon community, whose members believed that all the wild predictions Q made in their thousands of posts would come true.

“The general consensus is that Trump is going to crush the Deep State and that all the bad libs are going to jail ASAP, that we’re going to go back to the gold standard and the Fed is going to be destroyed,” said Mike Rains, a closely followed researcher. the QAnon community, told WIRED. “Ukrainian biolabs will be exposed as the source of Covid and (Anthony) Fauci and the company will all be sentenced to death for crimes against humanity.”

This can be seen on Telegram channels and fringe platforms like Gab and Truth Social, where QAnon influencers are hunting after the massive purge of QAnon accounts on mainstream platforms in 2021 after the Capitol attack.

But it can also be seen on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and, especially X, which has, since centibillionaire Elon Musk’s takeoverprovides fertile ground for conspiracy to thrive, in addition to providing income for influencers to monetize their madness.

Meta, TikTok, and X did not respond to comments about QAnon’s content on their platforms.

“It certainly doesn’t help that under Musk, QAnon’s unsubstantiated conspiracy theories have flourished throughout X, giving them a large audience and a veneer of legitimacy,” Cook said.

Among those who started what was then called Twitter after the January 6 attack on the Capitol was Trump. Driven to post on his own small platform Truth Social, he quickly embraced QAnon wholeheartedly, promoting QAnon-linked accounts nearly 1,000 times, according to an October analysis in Media Matters.