Lifestyle influencers are using COVID-19 to spread
QAnon conspiracy theories: 'I truly believe I owe it to my audience to be more for them during this turning point in our culture'
THE PRETENSION IS OVERWHELMING
Rachel E. Greenspan
May 15, 2020
Snapchat
May 15, 2020
Snapchat
The QAnon conspiracy theory movement is spreading to some of Instagram's fashionable influencers. @jalynnschroeder/Instagram; @luvbec/Instagram; @krystaltini/Instagram
QAnon, a conspiracy theory deeply engrained with religious conservatives, is no longer just a fringe movement. Now, lifestyle influencers are spreading Q's gospel with their followers.
During the coronavirus pandemic, many QAnon believers have promoted conspiracy theories about "the great awakening" and a supposed plot against Donald Trump.
"I truly believe I owe it to my audience to be more for them during this turning point in our culture," Rebecca Pfeiffer of @luvbec told Insider in an email.
The spread represents a dangerous trend towards belief in unverified information online, that has spurned some Q followers into potentially violent action.
Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.
At first glance, Rebecca Pfeiffer's Instagram appears just like any other lifestyle influencer's feed. Pfeiffer's page @luvbec, which has 104,000 followers, is full of sepia-toned images of a happy family, denim and camouflage jackets, aesthetically pleasing kitchen decor, and sponsored posts with big brands, including Walmart.
But one post from April 7 stands out. Pfeiffer is wearing a bikini and a baseball cap adorned with the letter Q, designed with the American flag, and the words "where we go one, we go all," one of the QAnon conspiracy theory movement's top catchphrases.
"Humbled daily by your messages of awakening, of truth telling, of God-bearing grace," the caption reads, with the hashtags #wwg1wga, #qanon, #qdrops, and #thegreatawakening.
Pfeiffer is a follower of QAnon, the conspiracy theory movement that believes an embedded "deep state" operative sympathetic to the Trump administration is sending coded messages fateful for our culture and politics via an anonymous message board. Of the movement's many bizarre theories, most revolve around the idea that there is a secret plot against President Donald Trump.
QAnon has "no apparent foundation in reality," as NBC News noted, and it's possible that Q, the anonymous figure or group of people posting "Q drops" with new information for followers online, started as a trolling incident. The movement began in 2017 in the wake of the Pizzagate theory on 4chan, an anonymous online message board that is often a breeding ground for hateful vitriol and conspiracy theories.
There have been multiple incidents of QAnon supporters committing violence, including murders and attempted kidnappings, according to progressive research nonprofit organization Media Matters for America.
An FBI field office in Phoenix referred to QAnon as a potential domestic terrorism threat in 2019. "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," an FBI document obtained by Yahoo News said.
Pfeiffer is part of a small but mighty group of lifestyle influencers on Instagram who talk about QAnon in between fashion and parenting posts.
Pfeiffer's QAnon stories and posts are remarkably unspecific, and use religious rhetoric that paints QAnon as "the great awakening" of our time. Followers often times come off as missionaries of sorts, spreading the gospel of Q, as detailed in a recent Atlantic piece.
"I only started sharing this information recently when I started feeling that I had a moral obligation to my audience to share more important content, given the current circumstances," Pfeiffer told Insider via email. "I truly believe I owe it to my audience to be more for them during this turning point in our culture."
The proliferation of conspiracy theories on Instagram is far from novel, as misinformation and far-right ideologies have continued to spread on the app for years. And Pfeiffer is certainly not the sole influencer espousing these beliefs, though the trend is not yet widespread. One comment on her April 7 post, from a micro-influencer with 1,460 followers, reads: "Your posts have been so refreshing to see on an influencers platform... bravo."
Another fashion and lifestyle influencer, Jalynn Schroeder, began sharing QAnon theories in March. "One week ago today, my eyes were opened," she captioned a video in which she explained her new belief system. The 14-minute video has a thumbnail showing a quote from Maya Angelou that reads, "We are only as blind as we want to be." While the late poet and author had no connection to QAnon, Schroeder, who did not return Insider's request for comment, used it to demonstrate her own so-called "awakening."
Krystal Tini, an entrepreneur and model whose Instagram page has nearly 100,000 followers, is another believer in QAnon who has shared conspiracy theories like the baseless idea that 5G technology causes COVID-19, which has led to people burning down 5G cellular towers.
Tini told Insider in an email that she became interested in QAnon because it "gets people to think for themselves and not become a slave to the mainstream media," but she said she's not "100% convinced it's 100% true." Tini added that she never would have shared her perspectives prior to COVID-19.
"If anything, it has piqued my curiosity about all that has been going on 'behind the scenes' for quite some time and also it has provided information I wouldn't otherwise have never known," she said.
Originally, believers in QAnon considered themselves to be on the margins of US culture and considered those in the mainstream society as "normies."
Marc Tuters, a lecturer in the University of Amsterdam's Media Studies program who researches radical political subcultures online, has dubbed the phenomenon of QAnon entering mainstream consciousness as "normiefication," as influencers spreading these beliefs are actually sharing "vague ideas" rather than specifics. Tuters said there's been a "gradual translation to less and less extreme versions, until all that's really left is just the slogans."
These women clearly believe what they're spreading, but their explanations of Q are much easier to swallow than the notion that the Clintons and Obama were involved in a child sex ring.
Social media platforms have struggled to tamp down the spread of these theories during the coronavirus pandemic, as many of them are harmful to public health.
During the coronavirus pandemic, influencers, politicians, and celebrities have been posting misinformation and unproven treatments for the virus.
An April report by researchers from the Reuters Institute at Oxford University found that influencers are part of a group responsible for the most engagement with coronavirus misinformation and conspiracy theories on social media. While politicians, celebrities, and influencers made up only 20% of false claims, their posts accounted for 69% of social media engagement with such theories.
Federal agencies have also put out warnings against false treatment claims. "What we don't need in this situation are companies preying on consumers by promoting products with fraudulent prevention and treatment claims," Federal Trade Commission Chairman Joe Simons said in a March Food and Drug Administration press release.
But these types of unsubstantiated claims have only gotten worse since March. In a 26-minute viral video dubbed the "Plandemic," anti-vaxxer Judy Mikovits, identified as a doctor in the documentary-style short, claims that wearing a mask can increase chances of contracting COVID-19.
Carmella Rose, a fitness and lifestyle influencer with more than two million followers, shared the short documentary with her followers in Instagram stories on May 12. "Everyone needs to check out this video," she wrote. "It keeps getting taken off of YouTube and Facebook when getting millions of views, time to wake up."
QAnon, a conspiracy theory deeply engrained with religious conservatives, is no longer just a fringe movement. Now, lifestyle influencers are spreading Q's gospel with their followers.
During the coronavirus pandemic, many QAnon believers have promoted conspiracy theories about "the great awakening" and a supposed plot against Donald Trump.
"I truly believe I owe it to my audience to be more for them during this turning point in our culture," Rebecca Pfeiffer of @luvbec told Insider in an email.
The spread represents a dangerous trend towards belief in unverified information online, that has spurned some Q followers into potentially violent action.
Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.
At first glance, Rebecca Pfeiffer's Instagram appears just like any other lifestyle influencer's feed. Pfeiffer's page @luvbec, which has 104,000 followers, is full of sepia-toned images of a happy family, denim and camouflage jackets, aesthetically pleasing kitchen decor, and sponsored posts with big brands, including Walmart.
But one post from April 7 stands out. Pfeiffer is wearing a bikini and a baseball cap adorned with the letter Q, designed with the American flag, and the words "where we go one, we go all," one of the QAnon conspiracy theory movement's top catchphrases.
"Humbled daily by your messages of awakening, of truth telling, of God-bearing grace," the caption reads, with the hashtags #wwg1wga, #qanon, #qdrops, and #thegreatawakening.
Pfeiffer is a follower of QAnon, the conspiracy theory movement that believes an embedded "deep state" operative sympathetic to the Trump administration is sending coded messages fateful for our culture and politics via an anonymous message board. Of the movement's many bizarre theories, most revolve around the idea that there is a secret plot against President Donald Trump.
QAnon has "no apparent foundation in reality," as NBC News noted, and it's possible that Q, the anonymous figure or group of people posting "Q drops" with new information for followers online, started as a trolling incident. The movement began in 2017 in the wake of the Pizzagate theory on 4chan, an anonymous online message board that is often a breeding ground for hateful vitriol and conspiracy theories.
There have been multiple incidents of QAnon supporters committing violence, including murders and attempted kidnappings, according to progressive research nonprofit organization Media Matters for America.
An FBI field office in Phoenix referred to QAnon as a potential domestic terrorism threat in 2019. "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," an FBI document obtained by Yahoo News said.
Pfeiffer is part of a small but mighty group of lifestyle influencers on Instagram who talk about QAnon in between fashion and parenting posts.
Pfeiffer's QAnon stories and posts are remarkably unspecific, and use religious rhetoric that paints QAnon as "the great awakening" of our time. Followers often times come off as missionaries of sorts, spreading the gospel of Q, as detailed in a recent Atlantic piece.
"I only started sharing this information recently when I started feeling that I had a moral obligation to my audience to share more important content, given the current circumstances," Pfeiffer told Insider via email. "I truly believe I owe it to my audience to be more for them during this turning point in our culture."
The proliferation of conspiracy theories on Instagram is far from novel, as misinformation and far-right ideologies have continued to spread on the app for years. And Pfeiffer is certainly not the sole influencer espousing these beliefs, though the trend is not yet widespread. One comment on her April 7 post, from a micro-influencer with 1,460 followers, reads: "Your posts have been so refreshing to see on an influencers platform... bravo."
Another fashion and lifestyle influencer, Jalynn Schroeder, began sharing QAnon theories in March. "One week ago today, my eyes were opened," she captioned a video in which she explained her new belief system. The 14-minute video has a thumbnail showing a quote from Maya Angelou that reads, "We are only as blind as we want to be." While the late poet and author had no connection to QAnon, Schroeder, who did not return Insider's request for comment, used it to demonstrate her own so-called "awakening."
Krystal Tini, an entrepreneur and model whose Instagram page has nearly 100,000 followers, is another believer in QAnon who has shared conspiracy theories like the baseless idea that 5G technology causes COVID-19, which has led to people burning down 5G cellular towers.
Tini told Insider in an email that she became interested in QAnon because it "gets people to think for themselves and not become a slave to the mainstream media," but she said she's not "100% convinced it's 100% true." Tini added that she never would have shared her perspectives prior to COVID-19.
"If anything, it has piqued my curiosity about all that has been going on 'behind the scenes' for quite some time and also it has provided information I wouldn't otherwise have never known," she said.
Originally, believers in QAnon considered themselves to be on the margins of US culture and considered those in the mainstream society as "normies."
Marc Tuters, a lecturer in the University of Amsterdam's Media Studies program who researches radical political subcultures online, has dubbed the phenomenon of QAnon entering mainstream consciousness as "normiefication," as influencers spreading these beliefs are actually sharing "vague ideas" rather than specifics. Tuters said there's been a "gradual translation to less and less extreme versions, until all that's really left is just the slogans."
These women clearly believe what they're spreading, but their explanations of Q are much easier to swallow than the notion that the Clintons and Obama were involved in a child sex ring.
Social media platforms have struggled to tamp down the spread of these theories during the coronavirus pandemic, as many of them are harmful to public health.
During the coronavirus pandemic, influencers, politicians, and celebrities have been posting misinformation and unproven treatments for the virus.
An April report by researchers from the Reuters Institute at Oxford University found that influencers are part of a group responsible for the most engagement with coronavirus misinformation and conspiracy theories on social media. While politicians, celebrities, and influencers made up only 20% of false claims, their posts accounted for 69% of social media engagement with such theories.
Federal agencies have also put out warnings against false treatment claims. "What we don't need in this situation are companies preying on consumers by promoting products with fraudulent prevention and treatment claims," Federal Trade Commission Chairman Joe Simons said in a March Food and Drug Administration press release.
But these types of unsubstantiated claims have only gotten worse since March. In a 26-minute viral video dubbed the "Plandemic," anti-vaxxer Judy Mikovits, identified as a doctor in the documentary-style short, claims that wearing a mask can increase chances of contracting COVID-19.
Carmella Rose, a fitness and lifestyle influencer with more than two million followers, shared the short documentary with her followers in Instagram stories on May 12. "Everyone needs to check out this video," she wrote. "It keeps getting taken off of YouTube and Facebook when getting millions of views, time to wake up."
Screenshots from Carmella Rose's Instagram stories show her support for QAnon. @carmellarose/Instagram
Indeed, Facebook has been working to remove the video. "Suggesting that wearing a mask can make you sick could lead to imminent harm, so we're removing the video from Facebook and Instagram," a Facebook company spokesperson told Insider. YouTube said it has also sought to remove posts of the video, which contains "content that includes medically unsubstantiated diagnostic advice," Reuters reported.
Amid the coronavirus pandemic, QAnon has officially become mainstream. Even President Trump is publicly acknowledging the movement's conspiracy theories.
Alexander Reid Ross, a researcher who tracks white nationalism and a doctoral fellow at the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right, said that it's clear that the QAnon movement has wormed its way into mainstream culture.
"When you've got the president of the United States promoting these themes and theories ... You can say that they're fringe, in terms of the competent, rational mind, but you can't say that they're out of the mainstream," said Reid Ross.
In addition to the Plandemic, Rose, who did not respond to requests for comment, shared posts about "Obamagate" on her stories. "Obamagate," a conspiracy theory that alleges President Barack Obama and his administration illegally targeted the Trump administration in investigations (such as the Mueller probe), has been touted by President Trump.
Sen. Rand Paul tweeted on May 13 encouraging Congress to find out "what did the former president know." Then, Trump tweeted on May 14 urging Congress to investigate the "biggest political crime and scandal in the history of the USA."
35 current or former candidates for Congress have appeared to support QAnon, according to Media Matters for America, as reported by The Atlantic.
—Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) May 13, 2020
While Trump has continuously spread the Q-derived "Obamagate" theory, he has been unable to answer questions from reporters concerning crimes Obama allegedly committed.
—Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 14, 2020
Tini said there are certain QAnon theories surrounding Obama that are particularly appealing to her, because of the president's Secret Service code name, "Renegade," which is defined by the Oxford dictionary as "a person who deserts and betrays an organization, country, or set of principles."
"That right there has me asking," Tini said, "why would a president of the United States of America choose such a word to represent him?"
QAnon followers are particularly emboldened during the coronavirus pandemic, which is a "perfect storm for conspiracy theories," according to Tuters.
Pfeiffer told Insider that she only recently became interested in QAnon "when the narrative we were being presented through mainstream media didn't seem to be adding up."
Though she would have never previously shared political ideology with her followers, she feels it's her duty. "I only started sharing this information recently when I started feeling that I had a moral obligation to my audience to share more important content, given the current circumstances."
Tini echoed that sentiment, writing in an email to Insider that her decision to share QAnon with her Instagram followers "comes strictly from passion to pursue the truth as opposed to so many people being controlled by fear" during the coronavirus pandemic.
Tuters also said it makes sense that people are turning to QAnon during the coronavirus pandemic, as the world remains uncertain and people are searching for beacons of hope and guidance. "[Conspiracy theories] are simplistic narratives that people come up with to kind of connect their political beliefs with something bigger," Tuters said.
"People seek some kind of sense of certainty, understandably so, and explanations that can sort of fit things into a more coherent framework," he said, "and that's what attracts people to conspiracy theories in general."
Read more:
Facebook banned a cluster of 'fringe conspiracy' QAnon pages for breaking its rules on manipulation
Indeed, Facebook has been working to remove the video. "Suggesting that wearing a mask can make you sick could lead to imminent harm, so we're removing the video from Facebook and Instagram," a Facebook company spokesperson told Insider. YouTube said it has also sought to remove posts of the video, which contains "content that includes medically unsubstantiated diagnostic advice," Reuters reported.
Amid the coronavirus pandemic, QAnon has officially become mainstream. Even President Trump is publicly acknowledging the movement's conspiracy theories.
Alexander Reid Ross, a researcher who tracks white nationalism and a doctoral fellow at the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right, said that it's clear that the QAnon movement has wormed its way into mainstream culture.
"When you've got the president of the United States promoting these themes and theories ... You can say that they're fringe, in terms of the competent, rational mind, but you can't say that they're out of the mainstream," said Reid Ross.
In addition to the Plandemic, Rose, who did not respond to requests for comment, shared posts about "Obamagate" on her stories. "Obamagate," a conspiracy theory that alleges President Barack Obama and his administration illegally targeted the Trump administration in investigations (such as the Mueller probe), has been touted by President Trump.
Sen. Rand Paul tweeted on May 13 encouraging Congress to find out "what did the former president know." Then, Trump tweeted on May 14 urging Congress to investigate the "biggest political crime and scandal in the history of the USA."
35 current or former candidates for Congress have appeared to support QAnon, according to Media Matters for America, as reported by The Atlantic.
—Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) May 13, 2020
While Trump has continuously spread the Q-derived "Obamagate" theory, he has been unable to answer questions from reporters concerning crimes Obama allegedly committed.
—Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 14, 2020
Tini said there are certain QAnon theories surrounding Obama that are particularly appealing to her, because of the president's Secret Service code name, "Renegade," which is defined by the Oxford dictionary as "a person who deserts and betrays an organization, country, or set of principles."
"That right there has me asking," Tini said, "why would a president of the United States of America choose such a word to represent him?"
QAnon followers are particularly emboldened during the coronavirus pandemic, which is a "perfect storm for conspiracy theories," according to Tuters.
Pfeiffer told Insider that she only recently became interested in QAnon "when the narrative we were being presented through mainstream media didn't seem to be adding up."
Though she would have never previously shared political ideology with her followers, she feels it's her duty. "I only started sharing this information recently when I started feeling that I had a moral obligation to my audience to share more important content, given the current circumstances."
Tini echoed that sentiment, writing in an email to Insider that her decision to share QAnon with her Instagram followers "comes strictly from passion to pursue the truth as opposed to so many people being controlled by fear" during the coronavirus pandemic.
Tuters also said it makes sense that people are turning to QAnon during the coronavirus pandemic, as the world remains uncertain and people are searching for beacons of hope and guidance. "[Conspiracy theories] are simplistic narratives that people come up with to kind of connect their political beliefs with something bigger," Tuters said.
"People seek some kind of sense of certainty, understandably so, and explanations that can sort of fit things into a more coherent framework," he said, "and that's what attracts people to conspiracy theories in general."
Read more:
Facebook banned a cluster of 'fringe conspiracy' QAnon pages for breaking its rules on manipulation
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