Kimberly’s boyfriend was tired of hearing the QAnon videos she watched around their small apartment. To keep the peace, she started keeping the videos to herself. “I live in headphones now,” she told The Daily Beast.
“My boyfriend is—I don’t know how to describe it,” she said. “We have very different views. He does not think this QAnon thing is anything except nonsense. I drastically disagree.”
Over Thanksgiving, she joined a chorus of QAnon believers who lamented that their belief in the bizarre right-wing conspiracy theory had isolated them from friends or family: a loss keenly felt over the holidays. QAnon is “something I’ve been researching on my own, by myself pretty nonstop, 24/7 since probably July-ish,” Kimberly said. “And then it’s grown more and more and more and more and more and more intense for me.”
The QAnon theory falsely claims that President Donald Trump’s prominent opponents are part of an international criminal ring involved in the trafficking, abuse, and sometimes eating of children. Believers think this because “Q,” an anonymous message board user who claims to be a high-level military insider, has been telling them so since October 2017. Over its year-plus lifespan, the theory has attracted untold legions of fans. It has also attracted comparisons to cults for behavior by adherents, some of whom claim to have become estranged from their families and friends over their Q belief.
The Daily Beast spoke to four Q believers—two diehards and two who are beginning to experience doubts—who claim to have been isolated from loved ones, as well as a former Q believer who now thinks the isolation helps reinforce QAnon support. The Daily Beast is withholding their last names at their requests.
In October, Matthew suggested “a support group” for members whose significant others did not believe in Q.
Matthew, a Washington man, was already in a QAnon club; he made the suggestion in a QAnon Facebook group with nearly 25,000 members. But what he suggested, a specialized group to deal with family alienation, resonated with the community.