Continued:
Anyone who still follows QAnon in 2026 is genuinely mentally ill. I’m not being edgy here. This is on the same level as people who sincerely believe they were abducted by aliens. These people need professional help.
I mean, depending on the bounds of “mentally ill”, I think it’s sort of hard to argue the QAnon people were ever not overwhelmingly in that category. To believe ridiculous horseshit about ongoing material reality at a massive and thorough practical scale while being psychologically “normal,” you kind of need to be in an environment that normalizes such beliefs, and if you’re so isolated that 4chan or whatever esoteric Facebook or Twitter groups count as a primary enculturating environment, you are almost certainly not mentally healthy, whichever way the initial causal arrow went that put you in this situation. So basically that means structurally, the only group left where there’s a realistic possibility of not being mentally ill on that basis alone are the actual, literal in-person cults and other communities where it became the dominant belief, and you can imagine whether or not the people there are doing well.
So I think it was always basically ubiquitous among true believers.
The “true believers” may be mentally ill, but using that phrase like this just stigmatizes mental illness. People will believe in a convenient lie, or a lie that benefits them. It may be false hope, but that’s not the same as being delusional. That’s like calling all religious people mentally ill. (which I know, some people do) It’s an illogical and harmful conclusion. People higher up in the hierarchy know it’s a lie and are using it for their own gain. People lower down see it as justification for bigotry or whatever else, and use it for that. The true believers see it as a hope or a way out of this horror. QAnon functions a lot like a religion, especially like a cult. Let’s not punch down on our mentally ill comrades to criticize rational people making rational decisions that happen to be very racist and generally fascist.
The “true believers” may be mentally ill
Okay, so we agree and the rest of the comment isn’t relevant, right? You are making assumptions that I don’t and ignoring things that I already explained. It’s all just talking past me as far as I can tell.
I think it’s hard to argue that QAnon people were ever not overwhelmingly in that category.
My point is that QAnon is not overwhelmingly mentally ill, and to say so is stigmatizing mental illness. The “true believers” are few and far between, for most people it’s a convenient ideology that reaffirms what they already assumed was true. Racism is not a mental illness, neither is fascism. There may be vulnerable people who were preyed upon by QAnon, but I doubt that’s the overwhelming majority.
