QAnon: Understanding perception manipulators of the future

I THINK spin doctors are going to rule the world. This is one of my key takeaways after an absolutely fascinating time reading about QAnon.

To summarise my position: I obviously believe QAnon is full of nonsense.

That said, I think to dismiss this phenomenon, and/or to virulently attack it head-on would be ill advised.

The wiser approach is to scrutinise the phenomenon closely, and mine it for its endless insights into how the world is evolving.

Some years ago, colleagues of mine introduced me to the term "post-truth world". I’ve been reflecting on it ever since.

The key tenet of this concept is that in this day and age, facts and figures quite simply aren’t what they used to be.

I’m not going to do some deep dive into theories of epistemology, but this subject does somewhat boil down to the question of how do we know what is real?

At the very end of this particular rabbit hole lie questions like are we actually in the Matrix?

A little before that point could lie questions like how do you know this article is really written by a guy named Nathaniel Tan? How do you know Nathaniel Tan even really exists?

If you’ve never been to Estonia, how can you be absolutely sure that such a place exists, and isn’t something some people made up as part of a grand conspiracy?

I’ll grant that it’s extremely unlikely; but can you, as an individual, prove beyond a shadow of doubt here and now that Estonia exists?

Or that the purported writer of this article is who he says he is?

We are essentially taught that the opposite of QAnon-type conspiracy thinking is to employ the scientific method - perhaps the single most useful thing one learns in school.

I would posit that using the scientific method, one cannot posit absolute proofs about Estonia or Nathaniel Tan without going through considerable inconvenience.

Understanding this might be the first step towards being less dismissive towards the QAnon phenomenon.

Put another way, using accepted principles of the scientific method, how conclusively can you prove that the United States is not run by a cabal of Satan-worshipping paedophiles?

Just because it seems ludicrous does not make it untrue.

Of course, my view is that people who believe these sorts of things are misguided; but I think it would be unwise to dismiss them as crazy nutjobs that have just completely gone off the deep end.

This attitude is liable to blind one to the attitudes more and more people may be coming to have about the "mainstream truth", and result in an underestimation of how powerful manipulators of perception (MOPs) are in this day and age.

One might even be able to see QAnon as the latest incarnation of a process that perhaps first came to prominence via the likes of Cambridge Analytica, Donald Trump’s election, and Brexit.

I think studying these phenomena suggest that MOPs are quicker than most to understand perhaps three important points about consumers of information.

Firstly, that people believe what they want to believe.

In essence, facts and figures that cannot be validated by what an individual can see and touch in front of them (and sometimes even when they can), can often wither in the face of what people feel.

I think such people are willing to stretch or bend what others would consider facts and figures in favour of people they like, and to demonise people they don’t like.

Secondly, MOPs understand that there is likely a greater feeling of disconnect and disenfranchisement now than there has been before - possibly ever.

Historians will rightfully balk at such sweeping statements, but I think I would describe this observation as such.

I haven’t succeeded in Googling whether global wealth inequality is at an all time high (it seems to be the case in the United States at least), but I’d wager it’s at least at one of its worst points in history. I’d go so far as to say that this may be one of the world’s biggest problems.

The way media and culture works, it’s also very possible that the least fortunate among us are more exposed than ever to how the most fortunate among us live.

Coming back to what is relevant here, I think more and more people are feeling left behind; that something must be wrong with the world, for them to feel so out of place in it.

Like the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance, sometimes only crazy theories can explain a world that seems to have gone so crazy.

Thirdly, MOPs know how to create and tease a compelling narrative.

My sister sent me this absolutely brilliant article , to which I feel I can add little.

It was written by a game designer, who fascinatingly likened QAnon’s work to the work of other game designers whose core business was to find ways of keeping people engaged.

He discussed the phenomenon of apophenia - the habit of seeing patterns where none were intended.

An example of this is how author Michael Drosnin wrote books about "codes" he found in the Bible, which he argued prophesied historical events.

In the face of skepticism, Drosnin said: "When my critics find a message about the assassination of a prime minister encrypted in Moby Dick, I'll believe them."

Australian mathematician Brendan McKay employed a method similar to Drosnin’s, and was able to find "prophecies" of nine political assassinations "encoded" in Moby Dick.

Basically, a skilled manipulator can create the perception of a pattern when there aren’t actually any, and then go one step further by "making" you discover these "patterns" yourself, rather than spoon feeding it to you.

The end result is an addictive process, which becomes more and more convincing to the individual at every step.

When it comes to advice for people like me who believe that QAnon type phenomena are indeed dangerous and bad, I’m afraid I have more "don’ts" than "dos" for now.

At present, mainstream media seems to be going on a full on attack against QAnon. Most mainstream channels seem to be making fun of them, or painting them out to be crazies.

I can’t help but think that this will only "prove" to QAnon’ers what they’ve wanted to believe all along: that the world is out to get them, and that rich, powerful people are doing everything they can to suppress the "truth".

I have a similar view of "deplatforming".

I saw a popular tweet that said something like: “What major disasters followed from banning Trump from Twitter? Absolutely nothing. The world is perfectly fine.”

In one sense, that’s true. Nothing blew up. No one revolted.

But I don’t quite agree that everything is "fine".

As many others have noted , big social media corporations are essentially now the gatekeepers of "truth".

I definitely lean more Democrat than Republican, but looking at the way so much of mainstream media are now relentlessly giving Republicans and QAnon a hard time, I can’t help but wonder whether the pendulum has swung back too far.

More to the point, I believe that this partisan mainstream media onslaught will serve to further radicalise and polarise society.

The concept of an objective media seems to be fast disappearing in our rearview mirror.

I’m not one to pine longingly or pontificate about "going back to the good ol' days". Rather, I think we should be very conscious about how what used to be understood as "mainstream media" a few decades ago is fast becoming unrecognisable, and that we need to work hard to understand the nature of the beast that is taking its place.

It may not be an exaggeration that those who master this new landscape the fastest will be the ones with their hands on the steering wheel, where the future of the world is concerned.

Because if you can control what people think, what can’t you control?

NATHANIEL TAN is a strategic communications consultant, which some people feel is just another way of saying ‘spin doctor’. He tweets @NatAsasi and can be reached at [e-mail].