From Trolling To Fleecing: Co-Creator Of ‘Q’ Hoax Explains Its Scary Evolution

The Federalist ^ | 10/30/2018 | Georgi Boorman

[Simon Foxx]

A little less than a year after the first QAnon post, which has since led hundreds of thousands of news junkies down a conspiracy rabbit hole, news correspondent Jack Posobiec from One America News Network spoke with one of the co-originators of the “Q” persona who runs a group of individuals posing as a high-level government intelligence officer. On an anonymous “free speech” platform called 8Chan, they leave thousands of riddles, “clues,” odd questions, and cryptic lines as bread crumbs for their followers to help them in their search for truth.

Many major media outlets have overviewed the nest of conspiracy theories nurtured within Q followers. While many have speculated about who is behind Q and how it came to exist, thanks to Posobiec’s extensive research and the confession of a co-creator who goes by the pseudonym “Microchip,” we now know, with a high degree of certainty, the real origin story of QAnon.

[Jack Black]

Youtubers never moved Q from 4chan to 8chan. That is a complete lie,

How do you know? You don't know who Q is, you've never talked to him.

The claim made by Microchip, and backed up by various pieces of evidence is that he and a friend started Q as a LARP, a few others joined in, he moved on and is no longer part of the core team of "bakers".

He has named PamphletAnon, in particular as one of the guys who took it over.

What you can't deny is that "Q" moved from 4chan to 8chan. That happened.

The claim is that there were a few mods with some permissions on both boards who made that happen, because they were better situated on 8chan. Proponents of Q seem to ignore that he was only the latest in a long line of hoax "insiders" on 4chan.

Here's some background:

In 2016, there was FBIAnon, a self-described “high-level analyst and strategist” offering intel about the 2016 investigation into the Clinton Foundation. Then came HLIAnon, an acronym for High Level Insider, who posted about various dubious conspiracies in riddles, including one that claimed Princess Diana had been killed because she found out about 9/11 “beforehand” and had “tried to stop it.” Then “CIAAnon” and “CIA Intern” took to the boards in early 2017, and last August one called WH Insider Anon offered a supposed preview that something that was “going to go down” regarding the DNC and leaks.

Qanon was just another unremarkable part of the “anon” genre until November 2017, when two moderators of the 4chan board where Q posted predictions, who went by the usernames Pamphlet Anon and BaruchtheScribe, reached out to Tracy Diaz, according to Diaz’s blogs and YouTube videos. BaruchtheScribe, in reality a self-identified web programmer from South Africa named Paul Furber, confirmed that account to NBC News.

So, have PamphletAnon and other guys pretending to be Q on 8chan tried to monitize the phenomena?

One of the early people involved, Tracy Diaz, was a YouTUbers. Her Q postings quickly garnered her 250,000 views."Diaz followed with dozens more Q-themed videos, each containing a call for viewers to donate through links to her Patreon and PayPal accounts.

Diaz’s YouTube channel now boasts more than 90,000 subscribers and her videos have been watched over 8 million times. More than 97,000 people follow her on Twitter. Diaz, who emerged from bankruptcy in 2009, says in her YouTube videos that she now relies on donations from patrons funding her YouTube “research” as her sole source of income.

By then, Pamphlet Anon, whose real name is Coleman Rogers, had developed grander plans.

...p>Kicked off Reddit, Rogers hatched a new plan. He would replace the mainstream media — often a target of Q’s posts — with a constantly streaming YouTube network made up of the self-described “researchers” who were putting together Q’s clues.

Within a month, Rogers, 31, and his wife, Christina Urso, 29, had launched the Patriots’ Soapbox, a round-the-clock livestreamed YouTube channel for Qanon study and discussion. The channel is, in effect, a broadcast of a Discord chatroom with constant audio commentary from a rotating cast of volunteers and moderators with sporadic appearances by Rogers and Urso. In April, Urso registered Patriots’ Soapbox LLC in Virginia.

Rogers and Urso use their channel to call for donations that are accepted through PayPal, cryptocurrencies or mail.

There are a bunch more "decoders" who are probably not part of the creation of the Fake Q memes, but comment on each one. Almost all of them are following the same pattern for monitizing: soliciting donations directly via PayPal, Patreon or bitcoin, earning money with viewers via YouTube's "monitization" program, and selling Tshirt and other flair.

Proof is in the existence of all this stuff; here's the Patriot's Soapbox 24x7 YouTube channel: Patriot's Soapbox on YouTube.

The channel has 56,000 followers, and features links to half a dozen other related spin off channels.

Here is the "Patriots Soapbox" web site and forums.

Support the 24/7 Patriots Soapbox Team! Collapse Thank you for being a fellow Patriot and part of the 24/7 LIVESTREAM. We need your help to keep the lights on and interactive news media flowing. Your support means the world to us. If you can, please help us out by donating either by PayPal for a one time donation or supporting us through Patreon. Thank you from the Patriots Soapbox Team!

They have thousands of registered members.

[Jack Black]

I don’t care if you believe in Q or not. Just don’t shit post if you’ve never spent even 15 minutes doing a little research. How stupid is that?

That seems fair.

That's not addressed to me obviously, I've done a lot mroe than 15 minutes of research on Q. You can review my "find i forum", i posted hundreds of comments, many including serious research on topics like federal prosecutions, use of military tribunals in American law, and the NXIVM cult.

I will say that posting an article you find interesting, even if you don't have backround on the topic, isn't usually considered a Freeper No-No.

[freedomjusticeruleoflaw]

So my next post will be accompanied with the following comments...

Hey everybody, I just read a cool headline. I don’t understand anything about this. but since it appears to make a lot of people here look like idiots I’m going to post it anyway. Enjoy!

[bagster]

Yes, look at the "uniting" right here! It includes dividing Freepers into pro and anti-Q, segregating the board, and banning people, not to mention many people leaving FR over the treatment on the Q boards.

Jack, your undercover assignment into the Q thread should have taught you that Q, the anons, and the FR Q researchers number one goal is to unite our forces against the Derp State under President Trump. To offer and show our support for MAGA.

Any division comes from people like you, mac truck, and a host of other rabid and aggressive Q deniers.

You take self defense for attack. I've said all along, "don't start none, won't be none".

That's how I play it, and that's how we, as a group, play it. With VERY rare exception.

This continued lie to make the Q people the bad guys is ridiculously transparent and absurd. And, the funny thing is, you know it is. You were there.

So why keep trying to perpetuate that lie. Is it the ongoing campaign to get any and all discussion of Q banned on this forum?

Go head on trying to debunk Q. It's your mission, I suppose and very important to you. But you should stop trying to silence your "opposition". It's just so....Un-American. Don't you think?

For the record, and because I know how you'll spin that last comment, I'm not calling YOU Un-American. I'm calling the suppression of opinions you don't agree with Un-American.

See the difference?

[bagster]

Thousands of people have been encouraged to believe in a lie.

Thousands, Jack?

That sounds like a very small number. Even in this you are disingenuous and very subtlely lying. Which is how you do it. You know damn well it's WAY more than "thousands".

And the number grows daily as the #GreatAwakening catches fire and more people know.

#HonestyIsTheBestPolicy

[bagster]

"When you DON'T believe in things that you don't understand then you suffer" - Bagster Magnifico.

#FlippedIt

[bagster]

Q-Info was always crap and I have not spent more than five minutes of my life reading that crap

Then how do you know it's crap?

#AMystery

[bagster]

You guys are sort of co-mods of the board, right?

Co-mods?

Nope. There are no mods on that thread other than the pros from Dover who mod all threads. There are no special "mods". Nobody is more specialler than anybody else who posts there. We are all FReepers, just like you. All Americans (with a few exceptions). All decent people.

It only seems a world apart because people like you have made it that way. You have "them'd" us. You get fantasies in your head like "ransomnote and bagster are co-mods" scary tales of "bosses", "cliques", "bullies", "they attacked me just for asking innocent questions", and more.

And then you spout them like gossiping hens as if they are true. People don't know, believe you. It's worse than Jr. High with your type, Jack.

Are we ready to allow skeptics to speak? Well, Jack. Let me explain this to you. We aren't there to discuss the validity of Q and endlessly debate if "Q is real". That discussion has been asked and answered.

We are there to research and discuss the information that Q points us to. And to help pass it on to an ignorant and sleepy public, if we can.

We welcome any and all who would like to be involved in that project. Q and President Trump ask it of us and they really do need the help in opening the eyes of a manipulated population.

So, to answer your naïve (or maybe not so naïve) question. I personally, would not welcome "skeptics" who want to come and start arguments about the validity of Q. That is disruptive to the mission, as you well know.

I would encourage "skeptics" to read the thread and the supporting documents, explore other sources on the internet, and then, if they still are "skeptics, to go about their business and leave those that are intent on supporting our President through his psyop/comm program, to theirs.

But the constant effort to shut-down the FR portion of the project is counter productive to what we believe is a patriotic re-awakening of the American spirit. So it does make us a bit prickly, as it would you if you were on the other side. Which you are not.

Jack. I have to say. You are VERY transparent and I'e told you that before.

Does that answer your innocent sounding question?

And name-calling and changes of heart, you say?

Look to the "skeptics" for the origin of name-calling, goodman. You will find it there. Responding to name-calling is another thing all-together.

And there can be no "change of heart" when the heart has remained the same from the beginning and there is no reason to change it. None.

The end.

[mac_truck]

Lol...its really not ad hominem to accurately describe someone's symptoms is it?

For instance when I write Q-anon was taken over by You-tubers, you read Q-anon was hacked by You-tubers.

Your inability to see the difference in meaning between the two phrases is caused by your cognitive dissonance, which leads to your reaching a false conclusion*.

*This no doubt stems from a core belief of yours that Q must be real, while I operate under no such illusion.

Now its entirely possible that the rights to animate Q-anon were actually sold or otherwise formally bestowed on Pamphlet and his crew, with Alex Jones acting as the broker.

We do know that Pamphlet and Baruch did a taped segment with Jones and then went to dinner with the Info Wars crew in late 2017... both of which were unusual occurances to bestow on a couple of relatively unknown Chan mods.

Either way...the Youtubers (Pam, Baruch, Farmer,Tracy,et al) created the Q-anon account on 8-chan, took over posting as Q, and one or more of them have maintained it ever since.

See...no hacking was required.

[MagnoliaB]

“It’s funny to hear Q-derps complain about “overloading the system on this board”, when Ransomnote reposts the exact same twenty pages of stuff every five days like clockwork. And not only that, for some reason double posts (one right after another) the same pages in that.”

On the Q thread Ransomnote or Q participants can repost anything all they want to. You little anti-Q vigilantes got Q banned on FR down to ONE thread. I was under the impression that as a compromise those that wanted to discuss Q could do it in peace and quiet with out drama created by you anti-Q shills and trolls on this ONE thread as the owner didn’t want to see “Q droppings” all over the place. I thought it was working pretty well. You cry baby anti-free speech anti-Q NPCs have all of FR as your safe space from Q yet you don’t seem happy unless you leave some anti-Q droppings around to try and bait people so you can scream how mean Q people are when they respond to your whining and transparent sh!t pot stirring BS. Remember, whining is not WINNING.

[MagnoliaB]

Yes seeing how the anti-Q shills and trolls manipulated and got DISCUSSION of Q BANNED to ONE thread here was an eye opener. AND THEY’RE STILL NOT HAPPY.

[bagster]

If Q was in a position to put the hurt on the Derp State,

While I appreciate the dramatice sentiment, Major, how exactly would you "put the hurt" on the Deep State.

Would you ARREST THEM ALL and then turn them over to a corrupt and derp state controlled justice system? And have your drastic swamp cleaning activities challenged up to a 4-4 Supreme Court? With a House controlled by Derp State Paul Ryan? A dirty FBI?

Is that what you would do?

How do you think that would turn out, with the media fully in the derp state pocket? Think Bill Clinton impeachment. The derps won that one.

OR, would you work to clean out those agencies, Congress, judiciary, Supreme Court, and work to reduce the influence of the CIA/Derp/Mockinbird media.

I might take the time necessary to do all that, as well as gain a more cooperative and powerful allied Congress.

See, Major, it's a lot more complicated then kicking down doors. And that's what the anti-Q, anti-Session, and ultimately anti-Trump people don't seem to understand.

Think logically.

[bagster]

“to people who have studied it in depth for over a year”

That’s just funny.

What's so funny about it?

[bagster]

Why in the world would you not go after the low-hanging fruit like Lerner and the Awans? Does not compute.

That's a very good point, Major.

There has to be a legititmate reason, though, otherwise the Trump administration is hopelessy corrupt and Trump is an incompetent boob flailing about all alone against the tide.

I refuse to believe that.

[bagster]

And not only that, for some reason double posts (one right after another) the same pages in that. Spare me your sanctimony.

You are aware because you have been told, like everybody else, that the double posts are due to problems with her VERY LARGE ping list. She has to use two ping lists to prevent names from dropping off.

That is a very petty bitch (nothing personal) to have about a thread that you have and are still trying to create the opposite number of, Jack.

I'm starting to think this is personal, Jack. Is it?

If not, why do you sound so hurt?

[mac_truck]

All of 'em are monitizing like mad.

The Q phenomenon is a money-maker there's no doubt.

Even the smallest You-tube channels that got involved were making thousands of dollars each month in donations.

Dayo doinit dough...

[bagster]

I've done a lot mroe than 15 minutes of research on Q.

Understatement of the year, there, Jacky boy.

Q debunkery is your life's work. I will give you credit. When you sink your teeth into a project, you go all in.

I just wonder why it's soooo important to you that you would spend so much time and energy on it.

Seriously. That's a legitimate question, right?

I know why I do it. I believe I'm doing my part in something positive. What's the positive aspect that drives your obsession?

I know it must hurt your feelings when people accuse you of being a "gun for hire" of the derps, but it does make one wonder. So you can understand the suspicion. Right?

[bagster]

mickety, you make no sense at all. Did you know?

But you sure seem to get off on trying to sound like some kind of autist with hacker inside knowledge.

I think you drive a truck.

We simple, free men will not be bamboozled by your BS.

[bagster]

The Q phenomenon is a money-maker there's no doubt.

So?

What are you, a communist?

Also, file your complaints with JR. He asks for donations too.

[Major Matt Mason]

There has to be a legititmate reason, though, otherwise the Trump administration is hopelessy corrupt and Trump is an incompetent boob flailing about all alone against the tide.

Just to be clear, I do not blame Trump at all. He is surrounded by the eunuchs in the GOP, so it'll make it tough for him to do much more than attempt to implement his agenda. Trump isn't the problem.