PROVIDENCE, RI (AP) – Ceally Smith spent a year in QAnon’s rabbit hole, devoting more and more time to research and discuss conspiracy theory online. Eventually, it consumed her and she wanted to leave.
She broke up with her boyfriend who recruited her for the movement, took six months out of social media and turned to therapy and yoga.
“I was like, I can’t live like this. I’m a single mom, work, go to school and do my best for my kids, ”said Smith, 32, from Kansas City, Missouri. “I personally did not have the bandwidth to do this and appear to my children. Even though it was all true, I just couldn’t do it anymore. “
More than a week after Donald Trump left the White House, destroying his hopes that he would expose the world cabal, some QAnon supporters invented increasingly elaborate stories to keep their faith alive. But others, like Smith, are turning to online therapy and support groups to talk about the damage done when beliefs clash with reality.
The QAnon conspiracy theory emerged on Internet discussion forums in 2017. At the root, the movement claims that Trump is waging a secret battle against the “deep state” and a sect of powerful devil-worshiping pedophiles that dominate Hollywood, the big business. , the media and government.
It is named after Q, an anonymous poster that believers claim to have authorization from the top secret government and whose posts are taken as predictions about “the plan” and the “storm” that is coming and “great awakening” in which evil will be defeated.
It is unclear exactly how many people believe in part or all of the narrative, but supporters of the movement were vocal in supporting Trump and helped to feed the insurrectionists that invaded the US Capitol this month. QAnon is also growing in popularity abroad.
Ex-believers interviewed by The Associated Press compare the process of leaving QAnon with giving up a drug addiction. QAnon, they say, offers simple explanations for a complicated world and creates an online community that offers escape and even friendship.
Smith’s then boyfriend introduced her to QAnon. It was all he could talk about, she said. At first she was skeptical, but she was convinced after the death of financier Jeffrey Epstein, while in federal custody and facing charges of pedophilia. Unmasked employees theories that he was murdered, but for Smith and other QAnon supporters, his suicide while facing child sex charges was too much to accept.
Soon, Smith was spending more time on marginal sites and on social media, reading and posting about conspiracy theory. She said she fell in love with the content of QAnon, which presented no evidence, no counter-argument and was still very convincing.
“We, as a society, need to start teaching our children to ask: Where does this information come from? Can I trust that? ” she said. “Anyone can cut and paste anything.”
After a year, Smith wanted to leave, suffocated by dark prophecies that were taking up more and more of her time, terrifying her.
Her then boyfriend saw her decision to leave QAnon as a betrayal. She said she no longer believes in the theory and wants to share her story in the hope that it will help others.
“I was also one of those people,” she said of QAnon and its control. “I left the other side because I wanted to feel better.”
Another former believer, Jitarth Jadeja, created a Reddit forum called QAnon Casualties to help others like him, as well as relatives of people still consumed by the theory. The number of members has doubled in recent weeks to more than 114,000 members. Three new moderators had to be added just to keep up.
“They are our friends and family,” said Jadeja, from Sydney, Australia. “It is not about who is right or wrong. I’m here to preach empathy for normal people, the good people who have been brainwashed by this death cult. “
Your advice for those fleeing QAnon? Get out of social media, take a deep breath and pour your energy and Internet time into local volunteering.
Michael Frink is a computer engineer from Mississippi who now moderates a QAnon recovery channel on the social media platform Telegram. He said that while making fun of the group has never been more popular online, it will only drive people further away.
Frink said he never believed in the QAnon theory, but sympathized with those who did.
“I think that after the inauguration many of them realized that they were taken for a walk,” he said. “These are human beings. If you have a loved one in it: make sure they know they are loved. “
QAnon advocates tend to respond in three general ways, as reality undermines their beliefs, according to Ziv Cohen, a forensic psychiatrist and extremist belief specialist at Weill Cornell Medical College at Cornell University.
Those who are only interested in conspiracy theory can shrug their shoulders and move on, Cohen said. At the other extreme, some militant believers may migrate to radical anti-government groups and plot potentially violent crimes. In fact, some QAnon believers have already done so.
In the middle, he said, are the many followers who came to QAnon “to help them understand the world, to help them have a sense of control.” These people can simply revise QAnon’s elastic narrative to fit reality, rather than face the possibility of being deceived.
“This is not about critical thinking, about having a chance and using facts to support it,” said Cohen of the QAnon believers. “They need those beliefs, and if you take that away, because the storm didn’t happen, they can just move the beams.”
Some now say that Trump’s loss has always been part of the plan, or that he remains secretly president, or that Joe Biden’s inauguration was created using special effects or stuntmen. They insist that Trump will prevail, and powerful figures in politics, business and the media will be tried and possibly executed live on television, according to recent social media posts.
“Everyone will be arrested soon. Information confirmed, ”read a post seen 130,000 times this week on Great Awakening, a popular QAnon channel on Telegram. “From the beginning, I said it would happen.”
But a different tone is emerging in the spaces created for those who have heard enough.
“Hello, my name is Joe,” wrote a man on a Q recovery channel on Telegram. “And I am a recovering QAnoner.”