title: QAnon

text: Similar groups in both the U.S. and the U.K. helped organize street protests that they say raise awareness of child sexual abuse and human trafficking. These protests and hashtags have often avoided social media restrictions and tend to attract more women and a more politically diverse and younger crowd than typical QAnon groups, including people opposed to Trump and his leadership. These groups are considered to be linked to the Pastel QAnon community.


title: QAnon

text: QAnon's child abuse allegations against popular entertainers are notably based on the unproven claims of actor Isaac Kappy, who in 2018 accused multiple Hollywood stars of pedophilia.


title: QAnon

text: Travis View wrote in a "Washington Post" column that QAnon and Pizzagate conspiracy theorists harm the credibility of the fight against child sexual abuse, as their baseless claims are a distraction from actual crimes. Followers of these theories have also credited themselves for arrests of criminals in which they had no part: QAnon promoter Jordan Sather credited Jeffrey Epstein's arrest to 4chan and 8chan, while none of the investigative reporting nor the indictment referenced these forums. Some of the conspiracy theories about Epstein's death have also brought people to QAnon.


title: QAnon

text: In May 2022, "The New York Times" reported that QAnon supporters were intercepting child migrants at the Mexico–United States border and collecting information about their families on the premise that they were falling prey to sex-trafficking schemes.


title: QAnon

text: QAnon Anonymous, a podcast dedicated to analyzing and debunking the QAnon movement, calls it a "big tent conspiracy theory" due to its ability to constantly evolve and add new claims. QAnon has incorporated elements from many other preexisting beliefs: besides its immediate predecessor Pizzagate, the theory has added features from much older conspiracy theories, such as those about the Kennedy assassination, U.F.O.s and 9/11. In 2018, Liz Crokin said that John F. Kennedy Jr. faked his death and that he is Q. Other followers adopted variations of the Kennedy conspiracy theory, asserting that a Pittsburgh Trump supporter named Vincent Fusca is Kennedy Jr. in disguise and would be Trump's 2020 running mate. In November 2021, hundreds gathered in Dealey Plaza in Dallas, the site of President Kennedy's assassination, believing they would witness the return of Kennedy Jr., or both Kennedys. Attendees expected the event would herald Trump's reinstatement as president, that Trump would step down to allow Kennedy Jr. to become president, and that Kennedy Jr. would then name Michael Flynn as his vice president. According to QAnon researcher Will Sommer, about 20% of QAnon followers believe the JFK Jr. theory, while the majority finds it too "farcical on its face".


title: QAnon

text: Due to overlap between the two movements, some QAnon followers have joined the sovereign citizens, a loose grouping of vexatious litigants and tax protesters whose set of pseudolegal beliefs implies that most laws and taxes are illegitimate and can be safely ignored if one uses the correct procedures. In 2022, the Anti-Defamation League reported that sovereign citizen ideology was attracting a growing number of QAnon adherents, as their belief in the Biden administration's illegitimacy meshed well with sovereign citizens' broader anti-government views. Some QAnon adherents have expressed belief in the reptilian conspiracy theory, asserting that the Satanic cabal alleged to be in power consists of shapeshifting reptilian humanoids.


title: QAnon

text: In 2018, Q said that "vaccines [not all]" were part of the Big Pharma conspiracy theory. But as the anxiety and isolation linked to the COVID-19 pandemic fostered a rise of conspiracy theories and anti-vaccine discourse, many in the movement used the pandemic to promote QAnon. Very little of this was directed by Q posts, and Q did not mention the pandemic until March 23, 2020 (when it called COVID-19 the "China virus"), not using the name "COVID-19" until April 8. But influencers in the QAnon community were openly anti-mask and anti-vaccine, and helped spread denialism as well as other misinformation about the pandemic. Notably, QAnon conspiracy theorists touted drinking an industrial bleach (known as MMS, or Miracle Mineral Solution) as a "miracle cure" for COVID-19. Q suggested that hydroxychloroquine, endorsed by Trump at the time, was a cure for the disease, and accused the Democrats of forcing infected patients into nursing homes, deliberately causing most COVID-related deaths in the United States. Some QAnon followers have said that the pandemic isn't real; others have claimed that it was created by the "deep state". QAnon adherents also helped promote the conspiratorial video "Plandemic".


title: QAnon

text: In March 2022, CNN, France 24, and Foreign Policy reported that QAnon promoters were echoing Russian disinformation that created conspiracy theories about US-funded laboratories in Ukraine. Russian state media falsely claimed that "secret US biolabs" were creating weapons, a claim refuted by the US, Ukraine, and the United Nations. In reality, the laboratories were first established to secure and dismantle the remnants of the Soviet biological weapons program, and since then have been used to monitor and prevent new epidemics. The laboratories are publicly listed, not secret, and are owned and operated by host countries such as Ukraine, not by the US. In the conspiracy theory interpretation, QAnon followers have claimed to justify the invasion of Ukraine as an effort by Putin and Trump to destroy "military" laboratories in Ukraine.


title: QAnon

text: Until the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, QAnon-adjacent groups were hostile to China. In March 2022, analyst Elise Thomas wrote in a report for the Institute for Strategic Dialogue: "The dynamics of the invasion are shifting their views. In an astoundingly short space of time, Xi Jinping appears to have been recast from a villain to a hero in the QAnon conspiracy pantheon."


title: QAnon

text: The Q persona was that of a well-connected individual with access to highly sensitive government information, who put themself at risk by dispensing their knowledge to 4chan, then 8chan/8kun users. Q used a calm, authoritative tone, rarely interacted with other posters, and never argued with those who disagreed with their claims. In 2021, "Bellingcat" analyzed several little-known posts published by Q during the days that followed the first "drops": while containing text identical to later messages unambiguously authored by Q, these also showed Q being "out of character" and behaving in a manner similar to 4chan's other anonymous posters. "Bellingcat"'s theory is that the author of these messages had not yet perfected the Q persona and was still settling into the voice of their online alter ego, which implies that Q was originally one 4chan poster among many instead of a powerful government insider.


title: QAnon

text: By 2020, it became accepted among researchers that the pseudonymous entity known as Q has been controlled by multiple people in cooperation. A stylometric analysis has suggested that two people likely wrote Q's posts, and that their "distinct signatures clearly correspond to separate periods in time and different online forums". An analysis of metadata of images posted by Q found that they were likely posted by someone in the Pacific Time Zone.


title: QAnon

text: By design, anonymous imageboards such as 4chan and 8chan obscure their posters' identities. Those who wish to prove a consistent identity between posts while remaining anonymous can use a tripcode, which associates a post with a unique digital signature for any poster who knows the password. There have been thousands of posts associated with a Q tripcode. The tripcode associated with Q has changed several times, creating uncertainty about the poster's continuous identity. Passwords on 8chan are also easy to crack, and the Q tripcode has been repeatedly compromised and used by people pretending to be Q. When 8chan returned as 8kun in November 2019 after several months of downtime, the Q posting on 8kun posted photos of a pen and notebook that had been pictured in earlier 8chan posts to show the continuation of the Q identity, and continued to use Q's 8chan tripcode.


title: QAnon

text: Since the Q tripcode was uniquely verified by 8chan's server and not reproducible on other imageboards, and Q did not have another means of communication, Q was not able to post when the website went down after the 2019 El Paso shooting. This means that Jim Watkins, the owner of 8chan, and his son Ron Watkins, who used to administrate 8chan, are two of the few people who can definitively say who Q is. Fredrick Brennan, the original owner of 8chan, said in June 2020 that "Q either knows Jim or Ron Watkins or was hired by Jim or Ron Watkins". He later said that "If [Jim Watkins is] not 'Q' himself, he can find out who 'Q' is at any time. And he's pretty much the only person in the world that can have private contact with 'Q'."


title: QAnon

text: In September 2020, Brennan speculated that the Q account was initially run by another person, with Jim and Ron Watkins taking over in late 2017 or early 2018. Brennan's theory is that the original 'Q' poster was Johannesburg resident Paul Furber, a 4chan and 8chan moderator and one of the first online commentators to promote QAnon. Evidence for this theory includes that Q's first password ("Matlock") was cracked on New Year's Day 2018 and, due to the nature of tripcodes, Furber was tasked with verifying that the new Q (with a new password/tripcode) was the same IP address as the old Q. Furber described this as "a lot of work", but something he'd been "called to do". Brennan further suspects that Ron Watkins seized control of the account from Furber by using his login privileges as 8chan's administrator. Furber has denied ever being Q. Both Jim and Ron Watkins have said they do not know Q's identity and have denied being Q.


title: QAnon

text: The documentary filmmaker Cullen Hoback spent three years investigating the origins of QAnon and its connection to 8chan, conducting extensive interviews with Jim and Ron Watkins and Brennan. In the last episode of "Q: Into the Storm", the 2021 HBO docuseries he produced from this research, Hoback showed his final conversation with Ron Watkins, who stated on camera:


title: QAnon

text: I've spent the past... almost ten years, every day, doing this kind of research anonymously. Now I'm doing it publicly, that's the only difference... It was basically... three years of intelligence training teaching how to do intelligence work. It was basically what I was doing anonymously before but never as Q. [Watkins then laughed and added:] Never as Q. I promise. Because I am not Q, and I never was.


title: QAnon

text: Hoback viewed this as an inadvertent admission by Watkins, and concluded from this interview and his other research that Watkins is Q. Watkins again denied being Q shortly before the series premiered.


title: QAnon

text: On February 19, 2022, "The New York Times" reported that analysis of the Q posts by two independent forensic linguistics teams using stylometry techniques indicated that Paul Furber was the main author of the initial Q posts, and Ron Watkins took over in 2018. Furber said Q's writing style had influenced his own, not the other way around.


title: QAnon

text: There has been much speculation about Q's motives and identity. A range of theories, held by both QAnon followers and critics, have credited Q's posts to sources including a military intelligence officer, a Trump administration insider, a live-action role-playing game created by the puzzle organization Cicada 3301, a left-wing artist collective, Michael Flynn, Stephen Miller, or Trump himself. One QAnon influencer, Austin Steinbart, caused controversy within the QAnon community by claiming that Q was his own time-traveling future self.


title: QAnon

text: The spread of QAnon has been accompanied by a series of slogans, catchphrases, buzzwords and hashtags that helped boost its popularity and online presence. Terms like the "cabal" or the "Storm", and Q's recurring phrases like "Trust the plan" or "Enjoy the show" are among the most popular. Q's "drops" are also known as "crumbs" (Q has used the term) or "breadcrumbs". In turn, followers of the conspiracy who analyze these posts have called themselves "bakers" who assemble the "crumbs" to make "dough", or "bread", as they weave the clues into a better understanding of the narrative.


title: QAnon

text: One early rallying cry among QAnon followers was "Follow the White Rabbit". A popular QAnon slogan is "Where we go one, we go all" (frequently abbreviated as "WWG1WGA"), first used by Q in April 2018. The phrase "Do your own research" (or "Do the research") encourages people to look for "clues" that will confirm QAnon narratives. "Q sent me" has been a declaration of "allegiance" to Q.


title: QAnon

text: Other common phrases in QAnon parlance include "white hat" (a Trump supporter), "black hat" (someone in league with the "deep state"), "Great Awakening" (the point at which the public "wakes up" to the truth), "red pill" ("taking the red pill" means achieving QAnon "awareness"), or "sheeple" (a disparaging term for people who believe the mainstream media narrative and not QAnon). "17anon" has sometimes been used as an alternative spelling of QAnon (Q being the 17th letter of the alphabet) and a way of circumventing social media algorithms.


title: QAnon

text: As it incorporates elements from many other conspiracy theories, QAnon naturally displays similarities with previous narratives, imagery and moral panics, whether political or religious in nature. In "Salon", Matthew Rozsa wrote that QAnon may best be understood as an example of what historian Richard Hofstadter called "The Paranoid Style in American Politics", the title of his 1964 essay on religious millenarianism and apocalypticism.


title: QAnon

text: QAnon's vocabulary echoes Christian tropes, such as the "Storm" (the Genesis flood narrative or Judgment Day) and the "Great Awakening" (evoking the reputed historical religious Great Awakenings of the early 18th century to the late 20th century), leading it to be sometimes construed as an emerging religious movement. QAnon followers, while seeing Trump as a flawed Christian, also view him as a messiah sent by God. According to one QAnon video, the battle between Trump and "the cabal" is of "biblical proportions", a "fight for earth, of good versus evil". Some QAnon supporters say the coming reckoning will be a "reverse rapture": "a revelation that means not only the end of the world but a new beginning", according to American political author Alexander Reid Ross.


title: QAnon

text: Like Pizzagate, QAnon has some resemblance to the Satanic panic of the 1980s, when hundreds of daycare workers were falsely accused of abusing children.


title: QAnon

text: According to the Anti-Defamation League, while "the vast majority of QAnon-inspired conspiracy theories have nothing to do with anti-Semitism", "an impressionistic review" of QAnon tweets about Israel, Jews, Zionists, the Rothschilds, and Soros "revealed some troubling examples". Ethan Zuckerman and Mike McQuade have argued that QAnon "is more anti-elite than explicitly anti-Semitic". "The Washington Post" and "The Forward" magazine have called QAnon's targeting of Jewish figures like George Soros and the Rothschilds "striking anti-Semitic elements" and "garden-variety nonsense with racist and anti-Semitic undertones". A Jewish Telegraphic Agency article in August 2018 asserted: "Some of QAnon's archetypical elements—including secret elites and kidnapped children, among others—are reflective of historical and ongoing anti-Semitic conspiracy theories."


title: QAnon

text: QAnon's adrenochrome-harvesting claims have been linked to blood libel by the followers (who believe in the truthfulness of both) and people who have researched QAnon. Blood libel is a medieval antisemitic myth that says Jewish people murder Christian children and use their blood to make matzo for Passover. In February 2022, social media users shared images of a sculpture of Simon of Trent, whose death was falsely blamed on the town's Jewish population, as evidence that elites harvest "adrenochrome" from children's blood. The artwork is in fact an example of the blood libel.


title: QAnon

text: Genocide scholar Gregory Stanton has called QAnon a "Nazi cult rebranded", and its theories a rebranded version of "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion", a fabricated antisemitic text published in 1903, deriving from antisemitic canards. Republican QAnon follower Mary Ann Mendoza was noted for her reference to the antisemitic text. She retweeted a Twitter thread about the Rothschild family, Satanic High Priestesses, and American presidents saying, ""The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion" is not a fabrication. And, it certainly is not anti-Semitic to point out this fact." An April 2021 Morning Consult poll found that 49% of Americans who believe in QAnon agree with the "Protocols", and that 78% of Americans who agree with the "Protocols" also believe in QAnon.


title: QAnon

text: In 2021, the Anti-Defamation League reported that neo-Nazis were exploiting the absence of leadership among QAnon adherents on Telegram to promote antisemitic conspiracy theories in those communities.


title: QAnon

text: Experts have classified QAnon's appeal as comparable to those of religious cults. According to an expert in online conspiracy, Renee DiResta, QAnon's pattern of enticement is similar to that of cults in the pre-Internet era where, as the targeted person was led deeper and deeper into the group's secrets, they become increasingly isolated from friends and family outside the cult. Online support groups developed for those whose loved ones were drawn into QAnon, notably the subreddit r/QAnonCasualties, which grew from 3,500 participants in June 2020 to 28,000 by October. In the Internet age, QAnon virtual communities have little "real world" connection with each other, but online they can number in the tens of thousands. Rachel Bernstein, an expert on cults who specializes in recovery therapy, said, "What a movement such as QAnon has going for it, and why it will catch on like wildfire, is that it makes people feel connected to something important that other people don't yet know about... All cults will provide this feeling of being special." There is no self-correction process within the group, since the self-reinforcing true followers are immune to correction, fact-checking, or counter-speech, which is drowned out by the cult's groupthink. QAnon's cultish quality has led to its characterization as a possible emerging religious movement. It has also been called a syncretic movement.


title: QAnon

text: Travis View, a researcher who studies QAnon, says that it is as addictive as a video game, and offers the "player" the possibility of being involved in something of world-historical importance. According to View, "You can sit at your computer and search for information and then post about what you find, and Q basically promises that through this process, you are going to radically change the country, institute this incredible, almost bloodless revolution, and then be part of this historical movement that will be written about for generations." View compares this to mundane political involvement in which one's efforts might help to get a state legislator elected. QAnon, says View, competes not in the marketplace of ideas, but in the marketplace of realities. The belief in "The Plan" that Q alleged was in place to defeat the deep state and the cabal boosted the confidence of QAnon followers, who were told that things were happening behind the scenes and that victory would inevitably follow if they trusted Trump and the secret plan. QAnon believers try to solve riddles presented in Q's posts by connecting them to Trump speeches and tweets and other sources. "The New Yorker" has likened QAnon to "a form of interactive role-playing". Some followers used a "Q clock" consisting of a wheel of concentric dials to decode clues based on the timing of Q's posts and Trump's tweets.


title: QAnon

text: Conspiracy theories have tended to make headway in times of societal uncertainty, and help people to feel more in control in the face of disturbing information. American sociologist Mark Juergensmeyer says he "find[s] QAnon consistent with many other extremist religiopolitical movements ... including those that have arisen in response to the recent global crises of mass migration, economic globalization, and now a global pandemic". Survey data showed in late 2020 that a quarter of those who knew about QAnon thought there was some truth to it. In a conspiracy theory environment, primary institutions of society that once served as trusted impartial authorities are easily rejected if they contradict the conspiracy theory, making it very difficult to counter the thinking of QAnon followers.


title: QAnon

text: People in the QAnon community often talk about alienation from family and friends... Though they typically talk about how Q frayed their relationships on private Facebook groups. But they think these issues are temporary and primarily the fault of others. They often comfort themselves by imagining that there will be a moment of vindication sometime in the near future which will prove their beliefs right. They imagine that after this happens, not only will their relationships be restored, but people will turn to them as leaders who understand what's going on better than the rest of us.


title: QAnon

text: Disillusionment can also come from the failure of the theories' predictions. Q predicted Republican success in the 2018 US midterm elections and claimed that Attorney General Jeff Sessions was involved in secret work for Trump and that despite outward tension, the two were allies. When Democrats made significant gains and Trump fired Sessions, many in the Q community were disillusioned. Further disillusionment came when a predicted December5 mass arrest and imprisonment in Guantanamo Bay detention camp of Trump's enemies did not occur, nor did the dismissal of charges against Trump's former national security advisor Michael Flynn. For some, these failures began the process of separation from the QAnon cult, while others urged direct action in the form of an insurrection against the government. Psychologist Robert Lifton said such a response to a failed prophecy is not unusual: apocalyptic cults such as Heaven's Gate, the People's Temple, the Manson Family, and Aum Shinrikyo resorted to mass suicide or mass murder when their expectations for revelations or the fulfillment of their prophecies did not materialize. Lifton called this "forcing the end". View echoed the concern that disillusioned QAnon followers might take matters into their own hands as Pizzagate follower Edgar Maddison Welch did in 2016, Matthew Phillip Wright did at Hoover Dam in 2018, and Anthony Comello did in 2019, when he murdered Mafia boss Frank Cali, believing himself to be under Trump's protection. In February 2019, Liz Crokin said that she was losing patience waiting for Trump to arrest the supposed members of the child sex ring, and warned that people might conduct "vigilante justice" if he took too long.


title: QAnon

text: The inauguration of Joe Biden as president was a major disappointment for QAnon followers, who were convinced that Biden had won the election through voter fraud and that his victory would be invalidated—many QAnon adherents believed until the last minute that something momentous would happen during the ceremony, resulting in Trump remaining in power. The inauguration ultimately went on as planned. According to a book on the psychology of QAnon followers, "Pastels and Pedophiles: Inside the Mind of QAnon", "The inauguration was a particularly difficult prophecy to get wrong, and the result has been that some QAnon believers experienced deep melancholy, suicidal ideation, or engaged in self-harm". On inauguration day, Ron Watkins wrote in a message board post: "We gave it our all, now we need to keep our chins up and go back to our lives as best we are able. We have a new president sworn in and it is our responsibility to respect the Constitution." Other QAnon followers believed that Biden's inauguration was "part of the plan". Around this point, many prominent conservatives, such as Steve Bannon and Bill Still, began to denounce QAnon, calling it a "psyop" (psychological operation) created by U.S. intelligence or the FBI. In a leaked text message conversation, Michael Flynn, once among the highest-profile QAnon supporters, called QAnon a "disinformation campaign to make people look like a bunch of kooks", suggesting that it might have been conducted by "the Left" or the CIA.


title: QAnon

text: After Biden's inauguration, analysts expressed concern that the disillusionment could lead hardline QAnon adherents to be recruited by groups such as the alt-right, white nationalists or neo-Nazis.


title: QAnon

text: A group of Telegram channels called the Sabmyk Network has been promoting a variation of QAnon by primarily targeting followers of the conspiracy theory who have been disillusioned by Q's failures in prediction. Set up by controversial German artist Sebastian Bieniek, the network (described as a new religion or cult) shares mainline QAnon beliefs but also believes in an idiosyncratic mythology surrounding a leader-prophet, Sabmyk, who will lead humanity's "awakening". The network has tried to link Trump to Sabmyk.


title: QAnon

text: In less than a year of existence, QAnon became significantly recognized by the general population. According to an August 2018 Qualtrics poll for "The Washington Post", 58% of Floridians were familiar enough with QAnon to have an opinion about it. Of those who had an opinion, most were unfavorable. The average score on the feeling thermometer was just above 20, a very negative rating, and about half of what other political figures enjoy. Positive feelings toward QAnon were found to be strongly correlated with susceptibility to conspiracy thinking.


title: QAnon

text: According to a March 2020 Pew survey, 76% of Americans said they had never heard of QAnon, 20% had heard "a little about it", and 3% said they had heard "a lot". In September 2020, a Pew survey of the 47% of respondents who said they had heard of QAnon found that 41% of Republicans and those who lean Republican believed QAnon is good for the country, while 7% of Democrats and those who lean Democratic believed that.


title: QAnon

text: An October 2020 Yahoo-YouGov poll found that even if they had not heard of QAnon, a majority of Republicans and Trump supporters believed top Democrats were engaged in sex-trafficking rings and more than half of Trump supporters believed he was working to dismantle the rings.


title: QAnon

text: In February 2021, an American Enterprise Institute poll found that 29% of Republicans believe the central claim of QAnon, that "Donald Trump has been secretly fighting a group of child sex traffickers that include prominent Democrats and Hollywood elites." A March 2021 Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) and Interfaith Youth Core survey found similar results: Republicans (28%) were twice as likely as Democrats (14%) to agree that the "elites" would soon be swept from power by a coming "storm"; Republicans (23%) were three times as likely as Democrats (8%) to agree that "Satan-worshipping pedophiles" control the government and media; and Republicans (28%) were four times as likely as Democrats (7%) to agree that "true American patriots may have to resort to violence" to resolve the situation.


title: QAnon

text: Multiple surveys have found that conspiracy theories such as QAnon are most popular among white Americans, especially evangelicals. A May 2021 PRRI survey confirmed that white evangelicals are among QAnon's strongest supporters, but also found that Hispanic Protestants are drawn to the movement in even larger proportions. According to the PRRI's figures, the core QAnon belief that global elites form a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles and child sex traffickers is held in the U.S. by 26% of Hispanic Protestants, 25% of White evangelical Protestants, 24% of other Protestants of color, 18% of Mormons, 16% of Hispanic Catholics, 14% of African American Protestants, 14% of other Christians, 13% of non-Christian religious people, 11% of White Catholics, 11% of religiously unaffiliated people, 10% of white mainline Protestants, and 8% of Jews.


title: QAnon

text: An analysis of four 2021 PRRI surveys showed that belief in QAnon had increased in the U.S. after Trump left office. In March 2021, 14% of Americans considered themselves QAnon believers, increasing to 17% in October of that year. In the average of the four surveys, about 22% of Americans believed that there was a "storm coming soon that will sweep away the elites in power", and 16% shared the core QAnon belief that the government, the media and the financial elite are controlled by Satanic pedophiles.


title: QAnon

text: Since QAnon's emergence, followers of the conspiracy theory have been part of controversial, sometimes violent events.


title: QAnon

text: In 2020, QAnon followers were actively involved in the presidential election, during which they supported Trump's campaign. QAnon personalities moved to dedicated message boards, where they organized to wage information warfare in an attempt to influence the election. One in 50 tweets about voting in the 2020 United States presidential election came from QAnon accounts. Two in 25 accounts using the hashtag #voterfraud, which spread unsubstantiated allegations of voting fraud, were QAnon accounts.


title: QAnon

text: As allegations of voting fraud spread further after Trump lost the election, QAnon followers supported the efforts of Trump's legal team to overturn the election through multiple lawsuits and submitted conspiracy theories of their own. They theorized that voting machines made by Dominion Voting Systems had deleted millions of votes for Trump. This was repeated on a segment on the far-right cable news outlet One America News Network, and Trump tweeted the segment to his followers. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency announced that the election was "the most secure in American history", with "no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes or was in any way compromised".


title: QAnon

text: One specific QAnon-affiliated conspiracy theory, known as Italygate and pushed in the last weeks of Trump's presidency, alleged that the American election had been rigged using technology from the U.S. Embassy in Rome with the help of an Italian hacker, an Italian general and the Vatican.


title: QAnon

text: Based on a misinterpretation of the District of Columbia Organic Act of 1871 by the sovereign citizen movement, according to which it transformed the federal government into a corporation and rendered illegitimate every president elected thereafter, some QAnon followers claimed that the 18th president (Ulysses S. Grant, in office from 1869 to 1877) was the last legitimate president. They believed that Trump would be sworn in as the 19th president on March 4, 2021, the original inauguration date until the Twentieth Amendment changed it to January 20 in 1933, and that he would restore the federal government. Based on intelligence that an identified but undisclosed militia group might attempt an attack on the Capitol on that date, the U.S. Capitol Police issued an alert on March 3. House leadership subsequently rescheduled a March 4 vote to the previous night to allow lawmakers to leave town.


title: QAnon

text: The Anti-Defamation League, British security firm G4S, and nonpartisan governance watchdog Advance Democracy, Inc., studied QAnon posts and made various warnings of the potential for violence on January 6, 2021. Violence did occur that day, as the attempts to overturn the election culminated with the attack on the U.S. Capitol. Multiple QAnon-affiliated protesters participated in the disturbance. Rioters were either seen wearing clothing with Q-related emblems or identified as QAnon followers from video footage. One participant whose attire and behavior attracted worldwide media attention was Jake Angeli, a QAnon supporter nicknamed the "QAnon Shaman". Ashli Babbitt, a rioter who was shot dead by police as she was trying to break into the Speaker's Lobby, was a committed follower of QAnon. The day before the attack, she had tweeted: "the storm is here and it is descending upon DC in less than 24 hours".


title: QAnon

text: The attack led to a crackdown on QAnon-related content, pages and accounts on social media platforms, including Facebook and Twitter. On April 19, 2021, the Soufan Center reported that Russia and China had amplified and "weaponized" QAnon stories around the time of the Capitol attack "to sow societal discord and even compromise legitimate political processes."


title: QAnon

text: Several QAnon adherents were charged with participation in the 2022 coup d'état plot in Germany, which involved various groups of far-right activists and conspiracy theorists, notably the Reichsbürger movement.


title: QAnon

text: Journalists have debunked QAnon's basic tenets. In 2018, "The Washington Post" called its proponents "a deranged conspiracy cult" and "some of the Internet's most "" Trump fans".


title: QAnon

text: Soon after QAnon emerged, some media outlets and public figures made efforts to portray it as credible. On December 28, 2017, the Russian television network RT aired a segment discussing "QAnon revelations", calling the anonymous poster a "secret intelligence operative inside the Trump administration known by QAnon". On March 13, 2018, Cheryl Sullenger, the vice president of the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, called QAnon a "small group of insiders close to President Donald J. Trump" and called their posts the "highest level of intelligence to ever be dropped publicly in our known history". On March 15, Kyiv-based , the official newspaper of the Communist Party of Ukraine, published an article calling QAnon a "military intelligence group". On March 31, actor Roseanne Barr appeared to promote QAnon, which was subsequently covered by CNN, "The Washington Post", and "The New York Times". Radio talk show host Lionel became an outspoken QAnon supporter. In April and October 2021, actor Jim Caviezel appeared at conservative conferences where he endorsed aspects of the QAnon conspiracy theory.


title: QAnon

text: On June 28, 2018, a "Time" magazine article listed Q among the 25 Most Influential People on the Internet in 2018. Counting more than 130,000 related discussion videos on YouTube, "Time" cited the wide range of the conspiracy theory and its more prominent followers and news coverage. On July 4, the Hillsborough County Republican Party shared on its official Facebook and Twitter accounts a YouTube video on QAnon, calling them a "mysterious anonymous inside leaker of deep state activities and counter activities by President Trump". The posts were soon deleted.


title: QAnon

text: On August 1, 2018, following the previous day's large presence of QAnon supporters at Trump's Tampa, Florida rally for the midterm elections, MSNBC news anchors Hallie Jackson, Brian Williams, and Chris Hayes dedicated a portion of their respective programs to the conspiracy theory. "PBS NewsHour" also ran a segment on QAnon the next day. On August 2, "Washington Post" editorial writer Molly Roberts wrote, "'The storm' QAnon truthers predict will never strike because the conspiracy that obsesses them doesn't exist. But while they wait for it, they'll try to whip up the winds, and the rest of us will struggle to find shelter."


title: QAnon

text: A May 30, 2019, FBI "Intelligence Bulletin" memo from the Phoenix Field Office identified QAnon-driven extremists as a domestic terrorism threat. The document cited arrests related to QAnon, some of which had not been publicized before. According to the memo, "This is the first FBI product examining the threat from conspiracy theory-driven domestic extremists and provides a baseline for future intelligence products... The FBI assesses these conspiracy theories very likely will emerge, spread, and evolve in the modern information marketplace, occasionally driving both groups and individual extremists to carry out criminal or violent acts."


title: QAnon

text: According to FBI's counterterrorism director Michael G. McGarrity's testimony before Congress in May, the FBI divides domestic terrorism threats into four primary categories, "racially motivated violent extremism, anti-government/anti-authority extremism, animal rights/environmental extremism, and abortion extremism", which includes both abortion-rights and anti-abortion extremists. The fringe conspiracy theory threat is closely related to the anti-government/anti-authority subject area. On December 19, 2018, a Californian man whose car contained bomb-making materials he intended to use to "blow up a satanic temple monument" in the Springfield, Illinois, Capitol rotunda to "make Americans aware of Pizzagate and the New World Order, who were dismantling society" was arrested. The FBI said another factor driving the intensity of anti-government extremism is "the uncovering of real conspiracies or cover-ups involving illegal, harmful, or unconstitutional activities by government officials or leading political figures".


title: QAnon

text: On August 25, 2020, two U.S. Representatives, Democrat Tom Malinowski and Republican Denver Riggleman, introduced a bipartisan simple resolution (H. Res. 1154) condemning QAnon and rejecting its conspiracy theories. Malinowski said the resolution's aim was to formally repudiate "this dangerous, anti-Semitic, conspiracy-mongering cult that the FBI says is radicalizing Americans to violence". The resolution also urged the FBI and other law enforcement and homeland security agencies "to continue to strengthen their focus on preventing violence, threats, harassment, and other criminal activity by extremists motivated by fringe political conspiracy theories" and encouraged the U.S. intelligence community "to uncover any foreign support, assistance, or online amplification QAnon receives, as well as any QAnon affiliations, coordination, and contacts with foreign extremist organizations or groups espousing violence".


title: QAnon

text: In September 2020, Malinowski received death threats from QAnon followers after being falsely accused of wanting to protect sexual predators. The threats were prompted by a National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) campaign advertisement that falsely claimed that Malinowski worked against plans to increase registration for sex offenders in a 2006 crime bill while he was working as a lobbyist for Human Rights Watch.


title: QAnon

text: The resolution passed on October 2, 2020, in a 371–18 vote. Seventeen Republicans (including Steve King, Paul Gosar, and Daniel Webster) and one independent (Justin Amash) voted no; Republican Andy Harris voted "present". According to Will Sommer in "The Daily Beast", the resolution does not have the force of law. Before the vote, Malinowski told "Slate" magazine, referencing the NRCC ad: "I don't want to see any Republicans voting against fire on the House floor this week and then continuing to play with fire next week by running these kinds of ads against Democratic candidates."


title: QAnon

text: In 2019, two Republican congressional candidates expressed support for QAnon theories. In early 2020, Jim Watkins created the "Disarm the Deep State" super PAC, whose stated aim was to "mobilize a community of patriots in order to remove power from Deep State members". In November 2020, it was reported that the PAC had raised just $4,736, including a $500 loan from Watkins's lawyer.


title: QAnon

text: In 2020, there were 97 QAnon followers in the primaries, of whom 22 Republicans and two independents ran in the elections of that year. Businesswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene won an August 2020 runoff to become the GOP nominee in the 14th Congressional District in Georgia. In 2020, she said many of Q's claims "have really proven to be true". Months into the Trump presidency, she stated in a video: "There's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take this global cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles out, and I think we have the president to do it". Jo Rae Perkins, the 2020 Republican Senate candidate in Oregon, tweeted a video on the night of her May primary victory showing her holding a WWG1WGA sticker and stating that she "[stood] with Q and the team. Thank you Anons, and thank you patriots." She expressed regret at having later deleted the video on the advice of a political consultant. The next month she took the "digital soldiers oath" that Q had requested followers to do three days earlier.


title: QAnon

text: On June 30, 2020, incumbent Republican U.S. representative Scott Tipton lost a primary for Colorado's 3rd congressional district to Lauren Boebert in an upset. Boebert expressed tentative support for QAnon in an interview, but after winning the primary, attempted to distance herself from those statements, saying "I'm not a follower." Boebert was elected to Congress that November. Angela Stanton-King, a Trump-backed candidate running for the Georgia House seat of the late congressman John Lewis, posted on Twitter that Black Lives Matter is "a major cover up for pedophilia and human trafficking" and "the storm is here". Stanton-King told a reporter that her posts did not relate to QAnon, asserting, "It was raining that day." Weather records did not show precipitation in her area on the day of the post.


title: QAnon

text: In August 2020, "The New York Times" said that the Texas Republican Party's new slogan ("We Are the Storm") was taken from Q. Texas Republican Party officials denied this, saying it was inspired by a biblical passage and has no connection to QAnon. In May 2021, representative Louie Gohmert and Texas Republican Party chairman Allen West attended the "For God & Country: Patriot Roundup" conference organized by QAnon followers in Dallas.


title: QAnon

text: Also in August 2020, representative Liz Cheney became the highest-ranking House Republican to take a stand against QAnon, which she called a "dangerous lunacy that should have no place in American politics". Other Republican Party members who have spoken out against QAnon include senator Ben Sasse, former Florida governor Jeb Bush and senator and former presidential candidate Mitt Romney. In March 2021, representative Peter Meijer said that the Republican Party should unequivocally condemn QAnon and other conspiracy theories, and commented: "The fact that a significant plurality, if not potentially a majority, of our voters have been deceived into this creation of an alternate reality could very well be an existential threat to the party". Representative Adam Kinzinger launched a PAC called "Country First", aimed at countering conspiracy theories and Donald Trump.


title: QAnon

text: According to Media Matters for America, as of August 20, 2020, Trump had amplified QAnon messaging at least 216 times by retweeting or mentioning 129 QAnon-affiliated Twitter accounts, sometimes multiple times a day. QAnon followers came to refer to Trump as "Q+". On August 24, 2018, Trump hosted Michael William "Lionel" Lebron, a leading QAnon promoter, in the Oval Office for a photo op. Shortly after Christmas 2019, Trump retweeted over a dozen QAnon followers.


title: QAnon

text: On August 19, 2020, Trump was asked about QAnon during a press conference; he replied: "I don't know much about the movement, other than I understand they like me very much, which I appreciate." An FBI Field Office in Phoenix has called QAnon a potential domestic terror threat, but Trump called QAnon followers "people who love our country". When a reporter asked Trump if he could support a notion that suggests he "is secretly saving the world from this satanic cult of pedophiles and cannibals", he responded: "Well, I haven't heard that, but is that supposed to be a bad thing or a good thing?" Presidential candidate Joe Biden responded that Trump was aiming to "legitimize a conspiracy theory that the FBI has identified as a domestic terrorism threat".


title: QAnon

text: On October 15, 2020, when given the opportunity to denounce QAnon at a "town hall"-style campaign event, Trump refused to do so and instead pointed out that QAnon opposes pedophilia. He said he knew nothing else about QAnon and told his questioner, Savannah Guthrie of NBC News, that no one can know whether the premise of QAnon's conspiracy theory is true. "They believe it is a satanic cult run by the deep state," Guthrie informed him. When Guthrie asserted that the conspiracy was not true, Trump responded, "No, I don't know that. And neither do you know that."


title: QAnon

text: In September 2022, an Associated Press analysis found that Trump was embracing QAnon more openly than before. Trump was reposting Q drops and QAnon memes on Truth Social, and more than a third of the accounts he had reposted in the last month had themselves shared QAnon slogans, videos or imagery. Trump had also played a QAnon song at a rally.


title: QAnon

text: On August 21, 2020, Vice President Mike Pence said that he did not "know anything about" QAnon except that it was a conspiracy theory that he "dismisse[d] out of hand". When asked whether he would acknowledge the administration's role in "giving oxygen" to the belief, Pence shook his head and said, "Give me a break." Pence also commented that the media giving attention to QAnon amounted to "[chasing] shiny objects".


title: QAnon

text: After the election, as the date of College vote count approached and Pence showed no intention of blocking the certification of Biden's win, QAnon figures vilified him as a traitor. After Pence's lawyers fought a lawsuit that aimed to make him refuse to count electoral votes for Biden, Lin Wood said that Pence would "face execution by firing squad" for "treason". A few hours before the count started on January 6, Wood tweeted that Pence should resign immediately and that charges should be brought against him. After the attack on the Capitol, Wood called Pence a "child molester" on Twitter; after his Twitter account was suspended, Wood used Parler to call again for Pence's execution by firing squad.


title: QAnon

text: Former lieutenant general and head of the Defense Intelligence Agency Michael Flynn, who briefly served as Trump's National Security Advisor, became popular among QAnon followers, who took a 2016 quote from Flynn about Trump having been elected by an "army of digital soldiers" and started calling themselves "digital soldiers".


title: QAnon

text: In August 2019, a "Digital Soldiers Conference" was announced for the next month in Atlanta. The stated purpose was to prepare "patriotic social media warriors" for a coming "digital civil war" against "censorship and suppression". The announcement of the event prominently displayed a Q spelled in stars on the blue field of an American flag. Scheduled speakers for the event, which was hosted by Yippy CEO Rich Granville, included Flynn and George Papadopoulos, as well as Gina Loudon, a Trump friend and member of his campaign media advisory board, singer Joy Villa, and Bill Mitchell, a radio host and ardent Trump supporter.


title: QAnon

text: On July 4, 2020, Flynn posted to his Twitter account a video of himself leading a small group in an oath with the QAnon motto, "Where we go one, we go all". Analysts said the oath was part of QAnon's attempt to organize "digital soldiers" for the political and social apocalypse they see coming. Flynn's apparent declaration of allegiance to QAnon made him the most prominent former government official to endorse the conspiracy theory. Member of Trump's legal team and Flynn's representative Sidney Powell denied that the oath was related to QAnon. During the preceding days, numerous QAnon followers took the same "digital soldier oath" on Twitter, and used the same #TakeTheOath hashtag Flynn did.


title: QAnon

text: After his November 2020 pardon and the election results, Flynn became more closely associated with QAnon, endorsing a website that sold QAnon merchandise, creating a Digital Soldiers media company, and saying he planned to launch a news media outlet also called "Digital soldiers". He appeared on various far-right media, pushing QAnon-affiliated conspiracy theories. Flynn's activism fueled speculation among QAnon followers that he would help them take control, or that he was Q himself. QAnon supporters expressed their commitment in social media posts by using the phrase "Fight like a Flynn" or variations thereof.


title: QAnon

text: In February 2021, several weeks after the Capitol riot, Flynn distanced himself from QAnon theories by saying in an interview: "There's no plan. There's so many people out there asking, ‘Is the plan happening?’ We have what we have, and we have to accept the situation as it is." But he did not outright disavow the QAnon movement. In May 2021, Flynn was a keynote speaker at the "For God & Country: Patriot Roundup" conference organized in Dallas, Texas by QAnon influencer John Sabal. At the end of the year, though, Flynn appeared to have rejected QAnon as a whole.


title: QAnon

text: In March 2021, Flynn's brother, retired lieutenant general Jack Flynn, and his wife filed a $75 million defamation suit against CNN, alleging the network had falsely accused them of being QAnon followers. They asserted that the video Flynn had posted in July 2020, which CNN had broadcast, depicted their pledging an oath to the Constitution, not to QAnon. The suit claimed Flynn alone had recited the QAnon motto, "where we go one, we go all", though the video showed all the other participants had done so. The plaintiffs also said they "are not followers or supporters of any extremist or terrorist groups, including QAnon". In December 2021, federal district court judge Gregory Howard Woods largely rejected CNN's motion to dismiss the case, allowing it to proceed to determine whether the Flynns had been portrayed in a false light.


title: QAnon

text: Attorney Lin Wood, who worked with Trump's reelection campaign and participated in the election lawsuits, promoted QAnon conspiracy theories. His Twitter profile included the hashtag #WWG1WGA, a slogan associated with QAnon. Among other baseless QAnon-associated claims, he accused Chief Justice John Roberts of child rape and murder. Wood also claimed that QAnon supporter Isaac Kappy was murdered for attempting to transmit information to Trump. On January 11, 2021, Delaware Superior Court Judge Craig A. Karsnitz cited Wood's social media postings in his reasons for an order revoking Wood's right to appear before the court. Karsnitz said that he had "no doubt" that Wood's tweets played a role in inciting the attack on the Capitol.


title: QAnon

text: In May 2021, Wood (alongside fellow attorney Sidney Powell and Michael Flynn) was a keynote speaker at the "For God & Country: Patriot Roundup" conference in Dallas.


title: QAnon

text: Another member of Trump's legal team, conservative attorney Sidney Powell, denied knowledge of QAnon in January 2020, though in the following months she retweeted major QAnon accounts and catchphrases and appeared on QAnon shows on YouTube.


title: QAnon

text: Upon leaving Trump's team, Powell remained involved in post-election lawsuits and was embraced by QAnon followers. Many of them had become discouraged that years of predictions of a Trump landslide victory and coming revelations about his enemies had not materialized. Powell's evidence in the lawsuit she filed in Georgia to overturn the election result included an affidavit from Ron Watkins. In this document, Watkins stated that his reading of an online user guide for Dominion Voting Systems software led him to conclude that election fraud might be "within the realm of possibility". Watkins did not provide any legitimate evidence of fraud.


title: QAnon

text: In May 2021, Powell asserted at the aforementioned QAnon conference in Dallas that Trump "can simply be reinstated" that "a new inauguration date is set", eliciting cheers from the crowd. The date for this was supposedly August 13 of the same year.


title: QAnon

text: On August 4, 2018, former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer was asked to comment on QAnon in his "ask me anything" session on the r/The Donald subreddit. In response to the question "Is Q legit?", Spicer answered "No."


title: QAnon

text: On three occasions during 2019 and 2020, Trump's deputy chief of staff and social media director Dan Scavino tweeted ticking-clock memes QAnon followers use to signify the countdown until the "Storm". Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, also occasionally retweeted posts with the #QAnon hashtag and follows many QAnon advocates. Eric Trump, in a summer 2020 tweet (later deleted), promoted his father's rally in Tulsa with an image of a large "Q" and the text "Where we go one, we go all".


title: QAnon

text: In August 2019, several hours after an FBI counter-terrorism memo linking the spread of conspiracy theories to anti-government terrorism became known, WalkAway campaign founder Brandon Straka, a former liberal Democrat who became a Trump supporter, addressed the crowd at a Trump reelection rally in Cincinnati, saying, "Where we go one, we go all". A videographer found numerous QAnon supporters in the crowd, identified by their QAnon shirts showing large Qs or "WWG1WGA".


title: QAnon

text: QDrops, an app that promoted the conspiracy theory, was published on the Apple App Store and Google Play. It became the most popular paid app in Apple's online store's "entertainment" section in April 2018, and the tenth-most popular paid app overall. It was published by Tiger Team Inc., a North Carolina couple, Richard and Adalita Brown. On July 15, 2018, Apple pulled the app after an inquiry from NBC News.


title: QAnon

text: In mid-May 2020, Google removed three other appsQMAP, Q Alerts! and Q Alerts LITEfrom the Android app store for violating its terms of service.


title: QAnon

text: Some social media forums, such as the subreddits r/QAnonCasualties and r/ReQovery, aim to assist either former followers and supporters of QAnon conspiracies or those whose family members engaged in the conspiracy.


title: QAnon

text: On March 14, 2018, Reddit banned one of its communities discussing QAnon, /r/CBTS_Stream, for "encouraging or inciting violence and posting personal and confidential information". After that, some followers moved to Discord. Several other communities were formed for discussion of QAnon, leading to further bans on September 12, 2018, in response to these communities "inciting violence, harassment, and the dissemination of personal information", which led to thousands of followers regrouping on Voat, a Switzerland-based Reddit clone that has been described as a hub for the alt-right.


title: QAnon

text: In early 2019, Twitter removed accounts suspected of being connected to the Russian Internet Research Agency that had disseminated a high volume of tweets related to No. QAnon that also used the #WWG1WGA slogan.


title: QAnon

text: On May 5, 2020, Facebook announced its removal of five pages, 20 accounts, and six groups linked to "individuals associated with the QAnon network" as part of an investigation into "suspected coordinated inauthentic behavior" ahead of the 2020 United States election. On August 19, Facebook expanded its Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy to address "growing movements that, while not directly organizing violence, have celebrated violent acts, shown that they have weapons and suggest they will use them, or have individual followers with patterns of violent behavior". As a result of this increased vigilance, Facebook reported having already "removed over 790 groups, 100 Pages and 1,500 ads tied to QAnon from Facebook, blocked over 300 hashtags across Facebook and Instagram, and additionally imposed restrictions on over 1,950 Groups and 440 Pages on Facebook and over 10,000 accounts on Instagram". In the month after its August announcement, Facebook said it deleted 1,500 QAnon groups; such groups by then had four million followers. On October 6, 2020, Facebook said it would immediately begin removing "any Facebook Pages, Groups and Instagram accounts representing QAnon, even if they contain no violent content". The company said it would immediately ban any group representing QAnon.


title: QAnon

text: On July 21, 2020, Twitter announced it was banning more than 7,000 accounts connected to QAnon for coordinated amplification of fake news and conspiracy theories. In a press release, Twitter said, "We've been clear that we will take strong enforcement action on behavior that has the potential to lead to offline harm. In line with this approach, this week we are taking further action on so-called 'QAnon' activity across the service." It also said that the actions could apply to over 150,000 accounts.


title: QAnon

text: Facebook banned all QAnon groups and pages on October 6, 2020. That day, QAnon followers speculated that the action was part of a complex Trump administration strategy to begin arresting its enemies, or that Facebook was attempting to silence news of this occurring; neither is true. Some followers speculated that a Justice Department "national security" news conference scheduled for the next day would relate to charges against Democrats, including Hillary Clinton. The Justice Department actually announced the investigation and arrest of Islamic State members.


title: QAnon

text: On October 7, 2020, Etsy announced that it would remove all QAnon-related merchandise from its online marketplace; the products were still available there as of January 2021.


title: QAnon

text: In an October 12, 2020, interview with CNN, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki said much QAnon material was "borderline content" that did not explicitly break its rules, but that changes in the site's methodology for recommendations had reduced views of QAnon-related content by 80%. Three days later, YouTube announced that it had modified its hate and harassment policies to bar "content that targets an individual or group with conspiracy theories that have been used to justify real-world violence", such as QAnon and Pizzagate. It would still allow content discussing QAnon if it did not target individuals.


title: QAnon

text: Hashtags and accounts associated with QAnon have since been banned by numerous social networks including Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram.


title: QAnon

text: In particular, the 2021 United States Capitol attack led to a crackdown on QAnon-related content on social media platforms during the days that followed. Twitter suspended Lin Wood's account on January 7 and those of Sidney Powell, Michael Flynn and other high-profile QAnon figures the next day. On January 12, Facebook and Twitter announced that they were removing "Stop the Steal" content and suspending 70,000 QAnon-focused accounts, respectively. More waves of deletions followed on various platforms.


title: QAnon

text: Amazon removed a pro-QAnon book after the Capitol riots, and many platforms took action against QAnon-related content after the incident.


title: QAnon

text: In May 2021, a report published by the Atlantic Council concluded that QAnon content was "evaporating" from the mainstream web.


title: QAnon

text: In April 2022, QAnon followers celebrated Elon Musk's proposed purchase of Twitter, believing that Musk's free speech approach would allow them back onto the platform.


title: QAnon

text: The mass deletions of QAnon-related accounts on the most popular social media outlets led many members of the movement to migrate to alt-tech platforms. Parler is one such "free speech" social media platform that grew in popularity among QAnon followers and conservatives in general in early 2021. Gab also became increasingly popular in these environments, especially after Parler went offline for several weeks following the Capitol attack.


title: QAnon

text: In the course of 2021, various alt-tech platforms allowed QAnon influencers and adherents to regroup, with Gab and Telegram becoming particularly important hubs of QAnon communities.


title: The Matrix Resurrections

text: The Matrix Resurrections is a 2021 American science fiction action film produced, co-written, and directed by Lana Wachowski, and being the first in "Matrix" franchise to be directed solely by Lana, without her sister, Lilly. It is the sequel to "The Matrix Revolutions" (2003) and the fourth installment in "The Matrix" film franchise. Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Jada Pinkett Smith, and Lambert Wilson reprise their roles from the previous films, and they are joined by Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Jessica Henwick, Jonathan Groff, Neil Patrick Harris, and Priyanka Chopra Jonas. The film is set sixty years after "Revolutions" and follows Neo, who lives a seemingly ordinary life as a video game developer having trouble with distinguishing fantasy from reality. A group of rebels, with the help of a programmed version of Morpheus, free Neo from a new version of the Matrix and fight a new enemy that holds Trinity captive.


title: The Matrix Resurrections

text: Following the release of "Revolutions", the Wachowskis denied the possibility of another "Matrix" film. Warner Bros. constantly expressed interest in reviving the franchise, hiring Zak Penn to write a new screenplay after the Wachowskis refused every offer to create more sequels. In late 2019, a fourth "Matrix" film was finally announced, with Lana Wachowski returning as director without her sister Lilly and Reeves and Moss reprising their roles. Filming started in February 2020 but was halted the next month by the COVID-19 pandemic. Wachowski considered abandoning the film, but was encouraged by the cast to finish it. Filming resumed in August and concluded three months later.


title: The Matrix Resurrections

text: "The Matrix Resurrections" premiered at Castro Theater in San Francisco on December 16, 2021, and was released theatrically and via the HBO Max streaming service by Warner Bros. Pictures on December 22, 2021. The film was a box-office bomb, grossing $157 million worldwide on a production budget of $190 million. Critics praised the performances of the cast and the film's ambition in storytelling, though criticism was aimed at its visuals, the screenplay, and the recasting of several actors, particularly Laurence Fishburne (replaced by Abdul-Mateen II) and Hugo Weaving (replaced by Groff). It received a nomination for Best Visual Effects at the 75th British Academy Film Awards.


title: The Matrix Resurrections

text: Thomas Anderson is the creator of a video game series called "The Matrix," based on his faint memories as Neo. At a coffee shop, he keeps crossing paths with Tiffany, a married mother with no recollection of her past, on which Anderson based the game character Trinity. He struggles to separate perceived reality from dreams. His therapist prescribes him blue pills to suppress the occurrences, which he stops taking.


title: The Matrix Resurrections

text: Anderson creates a simulation to develop game characters. A young woman named Bugs learns the simulation is running old code in a loop, enacting the moment when Trinity first found Neo within the Matrix. Bugs discovers a program embodying Morpheus, and helps free him. Having deduced that Neo is alive, Bugs and Morpheus extract Anderson from the Matrix, meanwhile Anderson's business partner Smith regains his memories as Agent Smith, Neo's former nemesis.


title: The Matrix Resurrections

text: Neo awakens in a pod and notices Trinity confined in another one nearby, before being extracted to Bugs's hovercraft "Mnemosyne". Neo is brought to the human city Io, where he reunites with an elderly Niobe. She explains that sixty years have passed in the real world since the Machine War ended, and that Neo's allies have died over time, including the original Morpheus. The peace achieved by Neo's sacrifice lasted for many years, but the large number of humans leaving the Matrix created a serious power shortage, causing the machines to fight over limited resources. Zion was destroyed, though most of its people relocated to Io with the aid of sympathetic machines. She says she won't risk Io to help him free Trinity, and has him locked in his quarters.


title: The Matrix Resurrections

text: Bugs and her crewmates free Neo and enter the Matrix to contact Trinity, where they are intercepted by Smith and other exile programs, including the Merovingian. They attack, but Neo and the Mnemosyne crew defeat them as Neo's abilities return.


title: The Matrix Resurrections

text: They leave and locate Trinity, but before Neo can talk to her, his therapist appears and immobilizes him by manipulating time. He reveals his identity as the Analyst, a program designed to study the human psyche. He explains that after Neo and Trinity's deaths, he was tasked with studying Neo's body and his anomalous powers as The One - convincing his superiors to resurrect both of them. He found that due to The One's inherent connection to all humanity in the Matrix, manipulating Neo could actually make the Matrix produce more energy. Moreover, he discovered that the code anomaly in Neo was actually shared in his bond with Trinity. By suppressing both their memories and keeping them close but always apart, the Matrix generated much more energy. Solving the energy crisis put the Analyst in a position to seize power from the Architect, after which he rebuilt the Matrix to control humans with emotional manipulation - citing that humans generally believe what they "want" to believe. However, Neo's liberation destabilized the system and triggered a fail-safe to reboot the Matrix. The Analyst stalled the reboot by convincing his superiors that threatening to kill Trinity would get Neo to return voluntarily to his pod.


title: The Matrix Resurrections

text: Neo and Bugs return to Io and talk to Sati, an exile program he previously met. Seeking to avenge her parents' deaths at the hands of the machines, Sati helps devise a plan to free Trinity. Back in the Matrix, Neo makes a deal with the Analyst; he will return to his pod if he fails to convince Trinity to leave the Matrix. Tiffany reaffirms her identity as Trinity while talking with Neo. Realizing that he has lost, the Analyst attempts to kill her, but Smith appears and attacks the Analyst, seeking revenge for his own imprisonment. Neo, Trinity, and the others escape in their vehicles, but are chased through the streets by hordes of "bot" programs and attack helicopters. As the last ones to be extracted, Neo and Trinity become cornered atop a skyscraper. Holding hands, they leap off and Trinity begins to fly, taking them to safety.


title: The Matrix Resurrections

text: With Trinity's newfound control over the Matrix, both return to confront the Analyst. They sarcastically thank him for giving them a second chance by resurrecting them, which they intend to use to remake the Matrix as they see fit. Neo and Trinity then triumphantly fly off into the sky together.


title: The Matrix Resurrections

text: Additionally, Andrew Lewis Caldwell and Ellen Hollman appear as Jude and Echo, respectively. Julian Grey and Gaige Chat also appear as Tiffany's sons Brandon and Donnie, respectively. Daniel Bernhardt was announced to be reprising his role as Agent Johnson from "The Matrix Reloaded", but his scenes were cut from the final film. Tom Hardy filmed an uncredited background cameo appearance, due to "The Matrix Resurrections" filming in San Francisco simultaneously with "", in which Hardy starred as Eddie Brock / Venom.


title: The Matrix Resurrections

text: While making the "Matrix" films, the Wachowskis told their close collaborators that they, at the time, had no intention of making another film in the series after "The Matrix Revolutions" (2003). Instead, they gave their blessing to the notion of gamers "inherit[ing] the storyline", and "The Matrix Online" video game was billed as the official continuation. Rumors of a new installment began to circulate online in 2011 when it was reported that the Wachowskis had been planning two additional films in the series and had discussions with Keanu Reeves about reprising his role. Another rumor in 2014 claimed that the sisters had submitted a story treatment for a new "Matrix" trilogy to Warner Bros. These were later confirmed to be false.


title: The Matrix Resurrections

text: In February 2015, in interviews promoting "Jupiter Ascending" (2015), Lilly Wachowski called a return to "The Matrix" (1999) a "particularly repelling idea in these times" when studios preferred to green-light sequels, reboots, and adaptations over original material, while Lana Wachowski, addressing rumors about a potential reboot, said they had not heard anything but believed the studio might be looking to replace them. At various times, Reeves and Hugo Weaving each confirmed their interest and willingness to reprise their roles in potential future installments of the "Matrix" films, with the stipulation that the Wachowskis were involved in the creative and production process.


title: The Matrix Resurrections

text: According to producer James McTeigue, there was "always talk" of a fourth "Matrix" film within Warner Bros. even without the Wachowskis on board, though prior to 2019 they had not found the right concept. In March 2017, "The Hollywood Reporter" wrote that Warner Bros. was in the early stages of developing a relaunch of the franchise, with Zak Penn in talks to write a treatment, and interest in getting Michael B. Jordan attached to star. The Wachowskis were not involved at that stage, although the studio had hoped for their blessing. The notion of a reboot or remake was denounced by Penn, and ideas for stories set in the already established universe were explored, including, reportedly, a prequel film about a young Morpheus or a sequel film from a descendant of his. In March 2018, Penn said he was working on a revival of the franchise and teased the possibility of an expanded universe. Penn clarified in October 2019 that he had been working on one of two "Matrix" projects at Warner Bros., and that his work was separate from the planned film. Penn's film did not go ahead in favor of Wachowski's film; Jada Pinkett Smith later reflected that handing the franchise's legacy to other filmmakers would have been a "horrendous mistake".


title: The Matrix Resurrections

text: As explained by Lana Wachowski during the Berlin International Literature Festival 2021, Warner Bros. constantly approached the Wachowskis every year to make another "Matrix" sequel, but the Wachowskis always declined the offers out of a lack of interest and because of their feelings that the trilogy's story had concluded. However, in 2019, Ron and Lynne Wachowski, the Wachowskis' parents, died alongside a close friend of Lana's, with her father passing away first, her friend second and her mother third. After not being able to process that kind of grief, Lana suddenly conceived the story of "The Matrix Resurrections" one sleepless night. In her words, Wachowski felt that while she could not have her parents back, she then could have Neo and Trinity back, feeling very comforted to see them alive again. With Lana Wachowski stepping forward for a sequel, Warner Bros. readily accepted her concept, eager to have the franchise's creator aboard for the sequel, according to McTeigue.


title: The Matrix Resurrections

text: The film was officially announced by Warner Bros. on August 20, 2019. Lana Wachowski returned as sole director, with Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss confirmed to reprise their roles. The script was written by Wachowski, David Mitchell, and Aleksandar Hemon, who had previously written the series finale of "Sense8" together. The Wachowskis also previously directed the 2012 film adaptation of Mitchell's novel "Cloud Atlas". Lilly Wachowski was not involved with the film due to work on the Showtime series "Work in Progress", but gave her blessing to those involved to come up with a story even "better than the original". She said she needed time away from the industry to "reconnect with myself as an artist and I did that by going back to school and painting and stuff", and that she had been affected by the death of her parents. John Toll was hired as cinematographer that month. Toll was cinematographer on the Wachowskis' previous films "Cloud Atlas" and "Jupiter Ascending", as well as every episode of "Sense8".


title: The Matrix Resurrections

text: Reeves and Moss were confirmed to be reprising their roles as Neo and Trinity upon the film's announcement in August 2019. In October 2019, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II was cast in the film, with some sources speculating he would be playing a young Morpheus, while Neil Patrick Harris was added in an undisclosed role. Following the first trailer's release, Abdul-Mateen II confirmed that he was indeed playing the role of Morpheus. Laurence Fishburne, who portrayed Morpheus in the original trilogy, announced in August 2020 that he was not asked to reprise his role as Morpheus. Pinkett Smith entered negotiations to reprise her role as Niobe, with Jessica Henwick entering negotiations to join in an undisclosed role, later revealed as Bugs. Henwick was being considered by The Walt Disney Company to audition for a role in "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings" (2021) at the same time she was offered to audition for the part of Bugs; in what she described a "red-pill/blue-pill moment" for her, Henwick chose "Resurrections" over "Shang-Chi". Jada Pinkett-Smith and Jessica Henwick were confirmed in December, along with the additions of Jonathan Groff and Toby Onwumere; Pinkett-Smith was convinced to return after learning from Wachowski how much the film meant for her. They went through a "couple different versions" for Niobe until they settled to depict the character in an elderly form.


title: The Matrix Resurrections

text: In January 2020, Eréndira Ibarra was cast, with Priyanka Chopra entering final negotiations. That same month, Lambert Wilson, who played the Merovingian in the sequels, revealed he was in negotiations to return. Hugo Weaving, who starred in the franchise as Agent Smith, was originally approached to reprise his role, but he had scheduling conflicts with his involvement in Tony Kushner's theatrical adaptation of "The Visit", leading Wachowski to conclude that the dates would not work after staying in touch with Weaving for a while. Weaving was later confirmed to be appearing in the film, but through archive footage from the original trilogy, while Groff was confirmed to have been cast as Smith in December 2021, replacing Weaving. Chopra and Wilson's castings were confirmed in February 2020, along with the additions of Andrew Caldwell, Brian J. Smith and Ellen Hollman. After some speculation, Chopra was revealed to be playing Sati in the film; the character was previously portrayed by Tanveer K. Atwal in "Revolutions".


title: The Matrix Resurrections

text: Joe Pantoliano, who appeared in the first film as Cypher, expressed interest in April 2020 in reprising his role despite his character's death in the first installment and messaged Lana Wachowski about the possibility of bringing him back, but received no response from her. In September 2020, it was announced Daniel Bernhardt was reprising his role as Agent Johnson from "The Matrix Reloaded" (2003). Christina Ricci was announced as part of the cast in June 2021; she had previously worked with the Wachowskis on "Speed Racer" (2008). Telma Hopkins was also announced to be part of the cast in September 2021. In December 2021, less than a week before the film's premiere, Henwick confirmed to have filmed a scene with a background cameo appearance of Tom Hardy, as "" (2021) was being filmed simultaneously with "Resurrections", though it is currently unclear if Hardy's appearance was kept in the finished film. After the film's Toronto premiere, it was confirmed that Chad Stahelski, who served a stunt coordinator in the previous films, appeared in the film as "Handsome Chad".


title: The Matrix Resurrections

text: Unlike the previous films, which were shot predominantly in Australia, "The Matrix Resurrections" was filmed in the United States and Europe.


title: The Matrix Resurrections

text: Under the code name "Project Ice Cream", the film began production in San Francisco on February 4, 2020. Filming also took place in Chicago. Filming in San Francisco caused irritation amongst residents and city workers after damage was inflicted to buildings and street lights. As in the case of other productions like "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings" and "Venom: Let There Be Carnage", the producers had to pay $420,000 to the San Francisco Police Department so they could film in the city. As opposed to other productions, no second unit was needed during the action sequences as Wachowski directed all the scenes herself. Scott Rogers, a stunt performer who worked with Reeves in "" (2019) and "" (2023), was hired to be the film's stunt coordinator.


title: The Matrix Resurrections

text: In March 2020, the principal filming was relocated to the oldest film studio in the world, Studio Babelsberg in Potsdam, the only acting "Unesco Creative City of Film" in Germany. On March 16, 2020, production on the film was suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic. After filming was halted, Wachowski contemplated the possibility of never finishing the film and letting it "go down as an incomplete legendary film not meant to be seen by anyone". However, the cast insisted Wachowski return and finish the film until she agreed. On August 16, 2020, Reeves confirmed filming had resumed in Berlin. Principal photography wrapped on November 11, 2020.


title: The Matrix Resurrections

text: Wachowski's long-time camera operator, Daniele Massaccesi, took over as director of photography in the latter part of filming after original DoP John Toll left due to a health issue in his family.


title: The Matrix Resurrections

text: The dialogue editing, sound mixing, sound design and sound editing with director Lana Wachowski took place in spring 2021 at the Babelsberg-based post-production company "Rotor Film". Visual effects that allow space and time to appear offset on the screen were created with camera systems specially developed for "Matrix Resurrections" during outdoor shootings and in the volumetric studio called Volucap in Babelsberg as well as in the world's first volumetric underwater studio on the Babelsberg film studio premises. Volucap, a cooperation between Studio Babelsberg, Fraunhofer Society and UFA, worked on site for two years on "Matrix Resurrections".


title: The Matrix Resurrections

text: After finishing work on "Matrix Resurrections", the co-producing Studio Babelsberg fitted its largest film studio (Stage 20) with rainbow colors and named it "Rainbow Stage" in honor of the Wachowskis. The Wachowskis, known for their commitment to people of diverse sexual orientations and identities, had previously directed several times in Babelsberg including, e.g., "V for Vendetta" and "Cloud Atlas".


title: The Matrix Resurrections

text: In September 2021, Warner Bros. confirmed that Johnny Klimek and Tom Tykwer would be scoring the film, having previously collaborated with Wachowski on "Sense8" and "Cloud Atlas", replacing Don Davis, who composed the score for the first three films. The 1967 song "White Rabbit" by Jefferson Airplane is prominently featured in the trailer and film. Wachowski said the choice of "White Rabbit" for the trailer not only was in reference to elements of Lewis Carroll's 1865 novel "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" that "The Matrix" had previously used and which "White Rabbit" is based on, but also a nod to Jefferson Airplane themselves which was formed as a house band for The Matrix club in San Francisco. The second trailer featured an electronic/orchestral cover of the Rage Against the Machine song "Wake Up" by Sebastian Böhm. The original song featured prominently at the end of the first "Matrix" film, and "Resurrections" features in its ending a cover by Brass Against.


title: The Matrix Resurrections

text: The film's score was released on December 17, 2021. A track from the album titled "Neo and Trinity Theme (Johnny Klimek & Tom Tykwer Exomorph Remix)" was released as a single on December 10.


title: The Matrix Resurrections

text: On August 24, 2021, the title was revealed as "The Matrix Resurrections". A trailer was screened as part of Warner Bros.' panel at CinemaCon that day, featuring a meeting between Neo and Trinity. Ahead of the film's first official trailer being released on September 9, the movie's official website was updated on September 7, presenting random clips of the trailer to the user and narration based on their time of day. A second trailer was released on December 6, 2021. By its opening weekend in the U.S. and Canada, the film had made 600.6 million impressions across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube, in part due to the exponential growth of HBO Max in 2021. According to RelishMix, "these stats run 2X over the norm for the genre as far as awareness and reach."


title: The Matrix Resurrections

text: A tie-in interactive tech demo titled "The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience", based on Unreal Engine 5, was released by Epic Games for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S during The Game Awards 2021.


title: The Matrix Resurrections

text: "The Matrix Resurrections" held its world premiere in the United States at the Castro Theater in San Francisco on December 18, 2021. The film was initially set for release on May 21, 2021, which would have premiered alongside "" also starring Keanu Reeves. However, the film was postponed to April 1, 2022, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The film was then moved forward to December 22, 2021. It is the final film from Warner Bros. Pictures to have a simultaneous 30-day release on the HBO Max streaming service, which was used in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: The Matrix Resurrections

text: According to Samba TV, the film was streamed in 2.8 million households over its first five days of release. Over the same period, it received the most unauthorized downloads of any feature, making up 32.6% of torrents. 3.2 million households had streamed it on HBO Max within its first week of release according to Samba TV. The film was released in China on January 14, 2022.


title: The Matrix Resurrections

text: The film was released digitally on January 25, 2022, and on Blu-ray, DVD and Ultra HD Blu-Ray on March 8. The retail versions includes bonus content including behind-the-scenes featurettes.


title: The Matrix Resurrections

text: "The Matrix Resurrections" grossed $37.7million in the United States and Canada, and $119.6million in other territories for a worldwide total of $157.3 million against a budget of $190 million, making the film a box-office bomb.


title: The Matrix Resurrections

text: In the United States and Canada, the film was released alongside "Sing 2" and "The King's Man", and was projected to gross around $40 million from 3,552 theaters over its first five days of release, with some tracking reaching as high as $70 million. However, the film ended up underperforming at the box office, grossing $10.75 million over the weekend for a five-day total of $21.2 million, finishing third behind "" and "Sing 2". The total was lower than the $16.7 million made by Warner Bros.' "Wonder Woman 1984" the previous Christmas in just 2,151 theaters, and was blamed in part on the simultaneous HBO Max release, lackluster audience reactions, and Christmas falling on a Saturday. In its second weekend, the film finished fifth at the box office with $3.8 million. In its third, the film earned $1.8 million and finished sixth. In its fourth weekend, the film finished tenth at the box office with $803,606.


title: The Matrix Resurrections

text: The film debuted second in Russia ($3.9 million), first in Japan ($3.9 million), and first in Thailand ($794,000). Its opening gross was 8% above "Eternals" (2021) and 12% over "Tenet" (2020). The film went on to earn $35.2 million in its second weekend, $13.7 million in its third, and $7.7 million in its fourth. In its fifth weekend, the film crossed the $100 million mark outside the U.S. and Canada. The film made $3.5 million in its sixth weekend, and $2.1 million in its seventh.


title: The Matrix Resurrections

text: In February 2022, co-financiers Village Roadshow sued Warner Bros. for breach of contract, claiming that the decision to stream "The Matrix Resurrections" on HBO Max created "abysmal theatrical box office sales figures" and damaged value of the "Matrix" franchise. Warner Bros. responded that the lawsuit was "a frivolous attempt by Village Roadshow to avoid their contractual commitment".


title: The Matrix Resurrections

text: The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported an approval rating of based on reviews, with an average rating of . The site's critics consensus reads: "If it lacks the original's bracingly original craft, "The Matrix Resurrections" revisits the world of the franchise with wit, a timely perspective, and heart." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 63 out of 100, based on 57 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B−" on an A+ to F scale, the lowest of the series, while PostTrak reported 60% of audience members gave it a positive score, with 46% saying they would definitely recommend it.


title: The Matrix Resurrections

text: "Los Angeles Times" reported a mixed reception and divided reactions to the film. Film critic Katie Walsh praised the film, concluding "Wachowski brings this unapologetic earnestness and sense of pleasure to "The Matrix Resurrections", which is also a welcome reminder that big action films can be well lit, stunningly designed and, yes, colorful too." "The Independent" gave the film 4 out of 5 and wrote, ""The Matrix Resurrections" ends with a literal call to the powers of sentimentality, empowerment and freedomit ponders whether humanity finds any value in them which, in turn, seems to really ask whether audiences still have any interest in blockbusters of this purity and ambition. For my own stake, at least, I hope they do." "Gizmodo" praised the film, saying ""Resurrections" is an excellent "Matrix" sequel that knows what you think you want in a "Matrix" sequel, and gives it to you in ways you aren't expecting. Sometimes those things don't work, but mostly they do, and as a result I'm confident to say: "The Matrix" is back." Matt Singer of "ScreenCrush" wrote, "The thing that carries "The Matrix Resurrections" through some of those rough patches instead is Wachowski's obvious affection for the characters, and the actors' reciprocal love for this world and its endless intellectual curiosities."


title: The Matrix Resurrections

text: "The Guardian" gave the film 2 out of 5 and wrote: "Really, "Resurrections" doesn't do much to remove the anticlimax that hung like a cloud over the cinema auditorium at the end of the third film in 2003. This movie is set up to initiate a possible new series, but there is no real creative life in it. Where the original film was explosively innovatory, this is just another piece of IP, an algorithm of unoriginality." "The Verge" also gave the film a negative review praising the performances and visuals but criticized the writing, characterization and recasting of characters and felt that ""Resurrection" centers Neo and Trinity's love story but in a disjointed and frustrating way." "The Times" called it "another truly horrible sequel" in a one-star review, criticizing what it called its creative shallowness, similarity to previous "Matrix" films, level of self-referentiality, and the quality of its action sequences. "Gulf News" gave the film a mixed review, concluding that ""The Matrix Resurrections" may be a bumpy ride but it's still a trip." "IGN"s Amelia Emberwing gave the film 4 out of 10, praising the performances but criticizing the execution and visuals while also writing ""The Matrix Resurrections" is the kind of film that will go down in cult history because it is so laughably bad. Truthfully, I can't even say it's unenjoyable because I spent so much of its overly long runtime giggling over how jaw-droppingly misguided the majority of it is", and further expressed, ""The Matrix Resurrections" is a bunch of really good ideas stacked together to make a badand sometimes uglyfilm."


title: The Matrix Resurrections

text: Following the film's release, producer James McTeigue told "Collider" that there were no plans for further "Matrix" films, though he believed that the film's open ending meant that this could change in the future: "I think the film also works where it's really open to audience interpretation, like what happened in those 60 years before they fished Neo out again, or Thomas Anderson to Neo. When Neo and Trinity are there at the end, and they're talking with The Analyst, what do they actually mean that they're going to change? So I think that it's out there, but it's not in our wheelhouse at the moment."


title: Stephen King

text: Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947) is an American author of horror, supernatural fiction, suspense, crime, science-fiction, and fantasy novels. Described as the "King of Horror", a play on his surname and a reference to his high standing in pop culture, his books have sold more than 350 million copies, and many have been adapted into films, television series, miniseries, and comic books. King has published 64 novels, including seven under the pen name Richard Bachman, and five non-fiction books. He has also written approximately 200 short stories, most of which have been published in book collections.


title: Stephen King

text: King has received Bram Stoker Awards, World Fantasy Awards, and British Fantasy Society Awards. In 2003, the National Book Foundation awarded him the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He has also received awards for his contribution to literature for his entire bibliography, such as the 2004 World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement and the 2007 Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America. In 2015, he was awarded with a National Medal of Arts from the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts for his contributions to literature.


title: Stephen King

text: King was born in Portland, Maine, on September 21, 1947. His father, Donald Edwin King, a travelling vacuum salesman after returning from World War II, was born in Indiana with the surname Pollock, changing it to King as an adult. King's mother was Nellie Ruth King (née Pillsbury). His parents were married in Scarborough, Maine on July 23, 1939. Shortly afterwards, they lived with Donald's family in Chicago before moving to Croton-on-Hudson, New York. King's parents returned to Maine towards the end of World War II, living in a modest house in Scarborough. When King was two, his father left the family. His mother raised him and his older brother David by herself, sometimes under great financial strain. They moved from Scarborough and depended on relatives in Chicago; Croton-on-Hudson; West De Pere, Wisconsin; Fort Wayne, Indiana; Malden, Massachusetts; and Stratford, Connecticut. When King was 11, his family moved to Durham, Maine, where his mother cared for her parents until their deaths. She then became a caregiver in a local residential facility for the mentally challenged. King was raised Methodist, but lost his belief in organized religion while in high school. While no longer religious, he says he chooses to believe in the existence of God.


title: Stephen King

text: As a child, King apparently witnessed one of his friends being struck and killed by a train, though he has no memory of the event. His family told him that after leaving home to play with the boy, King returned speechless and seemingly in shock. Only later did the family learn of the friend's death. Some commentators have suggested that this event may have psychologically inspired some of King's darker works, but King makes no mention of it in his memoir "" (2000). He related in detail his primary inspiration for writing horror fiction in his non-fiction "Danse Macabre" (1981), in a chapter titled "An Annoying Autobiographical Pause". He compared his uncle's dowsing for water using the bough of an apple branch with the sudden realization of what he wanted to do for a living. That inspiration occurred while browsing through an attic with his elder brother, when King uncovered a paperback version of an H. P. Lovecraft collection of short stories he remembers as "The Lurker in the Shadows", that had belonged to his father. King told Barnes & Noble Studios in a 2009 interview, "I knew that I'd found home when I read that book."


title: Stephen King

text: King attended Durham Elementary School and graduated from Lisbon Falls High School in Lisbon Falls, Maine, in 1966. He displayed an early interest in horror as an avid reader of EC horror comics, including "Tales from the Crypt", and he later paid tribute to the comics in his screenplay for "Creepshow". He began writing for fun while in school, contributing articles to "Dave's Rag", the newspaper his brother published with a mimeograph machine, and later began selling stories to his friends based on movies he had seen. (He was forced to return the profits when it was discovered by his teachers.) The first of his stories to be independently published was "I Was a Teenage Grave Robber", which was serialized over four issues (three published and one unpublished) of a fanzine, "Comics Review", in 1965. It was republished the following year in revised form, as "In a Half-World of Terror", in another fanzine, "Stories of Suspense", edited by Marv Wolfman. As a teen, King also won a Scholastic Art and Writing Award.


title: Stephen King

text: King entered the University of Maine in 1966, and graduated in 1970 with a Bachelor of Arts in English. That year, his daughter Naomi Rachel was born. He wrote a column, "Steve King's Garbage Truck", for the student newspaper, "The Maine Campus", and participated in a writing workshop organized by Burton Hatlen. King held a variety of jobs to pay for his studies, including as a janitor, a gas-station attendant, and an industrial laundry worker. He met his wife, fellow student Tabitha Spruce, at the university's Fogler Library after one of Professor Hatlen's workshops; they wed in 1971.


title: Stephen King

text: King sold his first professional short story, "The Glass Floor", to "Startling Mystery Stories" in 1967.


title: Stephen King

text: After graduating from the University of Maine, King earned a certificate to teach high school but, unable to find a teaching post immediately, he supplemented his laboring wage by selling short stories to men's magazines such as "Cavalier". Many of these early stories were republished in the collection "Night Shift". The short story "The Raft" was published in "Adam", a men's magazine. After being arrested for stealing traffic cones (he was annoyed after one of the cones knocked his muffler loose), he was fined $250 for petty larceny but had no money to pay. However, a check then arrived for "The Raft" (then titled "The Float"), and King cashed it to pay the fine. In 1971, King was hired as a teacher at Hampden Academy in Hampden, Maine. He continued to contribute short stories to magazines and worked on ideas for novels. During 1966–1970, he wrote a draft about his dystopian novel called "The Long Walk" and the anti-war novel "Sword in the Darkness", but neither of the works was published at the time; only "The Long Walk" was later released in 1979.


title: Stephen King

text: In 1973, King's novel, "Carrie", was accepted by publishing house, Doubleday. It was King's fourth novel, but the first to be published. He wrote it on his wife Tabitha's portable typewriter. It began as a short story intended for "Cavalier" magazine, but King tossed the first three pages in the garbage can. Tabitha recovered the pages and encouraged him to finish the story, saying she would help him with the female perspective; he followed her advice and expanded it into a novel. He said: "I persisted because I was dry and had no better ideas… My considered opinion was that I had written the world's all-time loser." According to "The Guardian", "Carrie" "is the story of Carrie White, a high-school student with latent—and then, as the novel progresses, developing—telekinetic powers. It's brutal in places, affecting in others (Carrie's relationship with her almost hysterically religious mother being a particularly damaged one), and gory in even more."


title: Stephen King

text: When "Carrie" was chosen for publication, King's phone was out of service. Doubleday editor William Thompson—who became King's close friend—sent a telegram to King's house in late March or early April 1973 which read: "Carrie Officially A Doubleday Book. $2,500 Advance Against Royalties. Congrats, Kid – The Future Lies Ahead, Bill." King said he bought a new Ford Pinto with the advance. On May 13, 1973, New American Library bought the paperback rights for $400,000, which—in accordance with King's contract with Doubleday—was split between them. "Carrie" set King's career in motion and became a significant novel in the horror genre. In 1976, it was made into a successful horror film.


title: Stephen King

text: King's "'Salem's Lot" was published in 1975. In a 1987 issue of "The Highway Patrolman" magazine, he said, "The story seems sort of down home to me. I have a special cold spot in my heart for it!" After his mother's death, King and his family moved to Boulder, Colorado, where he wrote "The Shining" (published 1977). The family returned to Auburn, Maine in 1975, where he completed "The Stand" (published 1978). In 1977, the family, with the addition of Owen Philip, his third and youngest child, traveled briefly to England. They returned to Maine that fall, where King began teaching creative writing at the University of Maine.


title: Stephen King

text: In 1982, King published "Different Seasons", a collection of four novellas with a more serious dramatic bent than the horror fiction for which he is famous. It is notable for having three of its four novellas turned into Hollywood films: "Stand by Me" (1986) was adapted from "The Body"; "The Shawshank Redemption" (1994) was adapted from "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption"; and "Apt Pupil" (1998) was adapted from the novella of the same name.