A new conspiracy theory called The Storm has taken the grimiest parts of the internet by, well, storm. Like Pizzagate, the Storm conspiracy features secret cabals, a child sex-trafficking ring led (in part) by the satanic Democratic Party, and of course, countless logical leaps and paranoid assumptions that fail to hold up under the slightest fact-based scrutiny. However, unlike Pizzagate, the Storm isnt focused on a single block of shops in D.C., or John Podestas emails. Its much, much bigger than that.
As most terrible things do, this story begins with a post on /pol/, a sub-board of the more-or-less-anonymous, anything-goes website 4chan. Over the last few years, /pol/ which technically stands for politically incorrect has slowly but surely become a top contender for the ever-coveted title of the most upsetting community online. Its the sort of place where neo-Nazis and people who believe women shouldnt have basic human rights used to meet before we started verifying them on Twitter and electing them to public office. And as of late, its expanded its ranks to include fringe members of all shapes and sizes.
On October 28, someone calling themselves Q began posting a series of cryptic messages in a /pol/ thread titled Calm Before the Storm (assumedly in reference to that creepy Trump quote from early October). Q claimed to be a high-level government insider with Q clearance (hence the name) tasked with posting intel drops which he, for some reason, called crumbs straight to 4chan in order to covertly inform the public about POTUSs master plan to stage a countercoup against members of the deep state. It was, in short, absolutely insane. However, thanks to some rather forced coincidences like Q kind of, sort of guessing that Trump would tweet the word small on Small Business Saturday, and this one time the internet decided that Q was totally on Air Force One because he posted a blurry picture of some islands while Trump was on his trip to Asia and a whole heck of a lot of wishful thinking, people believed he was the real deal.
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