Interview with Q

This interview with QAnon appeared in *Police Gazette* and *Intermittens* magazine.

## *Intermittens* introduction by Uncle Pedia

*The Internet has made people crazy. Libraries, newspapers, and reliable television news are no longer people’s primary news sources. Now, it’s Facebook, WhatsApp, SnapChat, TikTok, Instagram, and QQ.*

*Speaking of Q, one of the most bizarre claims is so absurd and ridiculous that, 20 years ago, it would have been too wacko for* South Park*,* Saturday Night Live*, or* The Simpsons*. But now, it’s believed by millions. This is QAnon, which brought Pizzagate and Donald Trump together.*

*Q is so obviously a sockpuppet that it’s bizzare to think anyone outside of a mental institution would take the whole thing seriously. But lots of people do.*

*This interview appeared recently in* Police Gazette*, but the interviewee insisted it be available for reprinting by others. Including us. And you, if you so choose.*

*– Editor*

## Interview

**P.G.: I'm interviewing Q, the founder of QAnon.**

Q: I'm not Q.

**P.G.: Then who is?**

Q: Nobody is. QAnon, Q, is a fictional character. A friend and I made it up.

**P.G.: I'm going to read from Wikipedia here. "QAnon is an American far-right political conspiracy theory and movement centered on false claims made by an anonymous individual or individuals, known by the name 'Q', that a cabal of Satanic, cannibalistic pedophiles operate a global child sex trafficking ring that conspired against the former U.S. President Donald Trump during his term in office. QAnon has been described as a cult."**

**Does that sound accurate?**

Q: Hell if I know. That's from the story we made up, yeah. It being a real cult? Don't know.

**P.G.: Presumably, you called yourself—yourselves—"Q " due to supposedly having Q Clearance. Is that correct?**

Q: No. It's been a few years, so I don't remember exactly. But I was a big fan of the cosmic prankster Q from Star Trek, the semi-all-powerful being. My colleague was a fan of James Bond, you know, with Q in charge of research and development? Q was behind everything. Then we got to wondering how many other things used "Q" as a character, so checked Q online—maybe on Wikipedia—and saw Q clearance. Perfect.

**P.G.: What inspired you to do this?**

Q: Boredom, mostly. That and trying to figure out how in hell a nutjob like Donald Trump got elected president of the United States. I figured he'd get impeached in six months, but, yeah, didn't happen. Two impeachments later, he was still in. But that was later.

It was a crazy time, you know? Even before COVID-19. That car murder at the white supremist Unite the Right rally, the hurricanes, Finland—Finland?—had its first terrorist attack. Brexit negotiations had begun. And every thing that came out of Donald Trump's mouth was looney tunes.

**P.G.: How did QAnon begin?**

Q: We kind of played around with making a crazy conspiracy. Really, it was a challenge. Can we make up something crazier than Trump and Pizzagate? Come to think of it, that was another reason for using "Q," the next letter after the "P" of Pizzagate.

But really, it wasn't until Stephen Paddock shot all those people in Las Vegas that we thought, "This is it. We're going to do it." Paddock, another "P." So "Q" had to come next. The "Anon" part was of course for Anonymous, which also started on 4chan, I think. But I didn't make that part up, somebody else did.

**P.G.: When did QAnon start?**

Q: Very shortly after the Paddock shooting, don't remember exactly. We posted our crazy crap on two or three places, but it took off on 4chan. Really, we didn't do much other than mashup Trump and Pizzagate. We even thought about calling it TrumPizzagate. But we figured nobody would remember how to spell that, so we kept it simple.

**P.G.: There were other "anons" before that. FBIAnon, and CIAAnon, for example.**

Q: Yeah, that's probably where the "Anon" part came from. That and Anonymous, of course.

**P.G.: Why did you do this?**

Q: It was a joke, really. My co-conspirator is Discordian and Pastafarian, and I'm Discordian and a card-carrying member of the Church of the SubGenius. It's all part of Operation Mindfuck, fucking with people's minds. The Internet has made that so very easy. Most people don't have the foggiest idea how to separate truth from fiction. Even if the fiction is incredibly stupid.

**P.G.: How did you feel when it caught on?**

Q: Amused—at first. Then, quickly, terrified. I can tell you, we never figured it would get very far. But the people who made up Pizzagate probably didn't figure that would get very far either.

Now, if people found out who we were...not good.

**P.G.: What do you think would happen?**

Q: What happened at Unite the Right rally? Crazy people might want to either follow us or kill us. We sure as hell don't want either one.

**P.G.: Then why do you continue to promote it? There's messages from Q posted on 9kum, formerly called 8chan.**

Q: Not me. Not my friend, either. I don't think. Others took it up.

**P.G.: I must amend my previous statement. It looks like there hasn't been a post by Q since shortly after Donald Trump lost the presidential re-election.**

Q: Could be. I don't know. I hope it is dying.

**P.G.: Not quite. Recently, hundreds of QAnon believers came from as far as New York and California to go to Dealy Plaza. That's, of course, in Dallas, Texas, where President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. They believed they would see the return of John F. Kennedy Jr. JFK Jr. then would become Donald Trump's running mate in the 2024 presidential election. When he didn't show up there, they figured he would come to a Rolling Stones’ concert later that evening.**

Q: You mean the John Jr. who died like 20 years ago? That's crazier than what we made up. I suppose they expected Brian Jones and Charlie Watts to come back from the dead and march to the inauguration while playing fife and drums.

**P.G.: I haven't seen that reported, but that's possible.**

**Also possible is that there has been suspicion, as you seemed to indicate, that more than one person has posted as Q. Stylometric analysis seems to show this, as it was used to determine that *Wuthering Heights* was, in fact, written by Emily Brontë and not by one of her sisters.**

Q: Definitely. More than one of us wrote as Q, I mean. That analysis stuff might work unless you got a couple of people who can write in different styles and are trying not to be found out.

Way we did it, one of us would write something and then the other would rewrite it. We did that at first, at least. Mashup our styles.

**P.G.: If you had it to do all over again, would you?**

Q: Me, no. This whole thing went much farther than I ever intended. At least not without making any money from it. But seriously, it's all gotten pretty scary. My co-conspirator? Probably loving it.

See this and much more in *Intermittens 14 SockPuppets*

## License

This interview available under the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license