Erling Hope

Q.Public Conspiracy Theory

A CrazyMaking Project

“The stories and information posted here are artistic works of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact.”

Most of us know about QAnon by now. Far fewer know about Q.Public. That’s because, while this alternative meta-conspiracy theory happens to be true, it isn’t actually real. Q.Public is a fictional conspiracy theory developed by Erling Hope in collaboration with a crack team of brilliant whackos. Have you wondered about the rumors of an elite cadre of transgender pacifists infiltrating the leadership of right-wing militia movements in the US? Or that COVID-19 was dispersed by powerful Anarchist teachers’ unions to curb the madness of school shootings and subvert facial recognition technology? And what about the insidious reemergence of the fedora among millennial hipsters, or why everything sucks? Have you wondered, perhaps in the dark quiet of early morning, what this human project is really about?

The Q.Public phenomena was crafted from the submissions of participants in the Crazy / Risky project of the past several years. In that project, participants were invited to share their “craziest” beliefs and their riskiest beliefs. (See caveats regarding use of the word “crazy” at bottom)

Conspiracy theories are not just one thing. First and most importantly, there are real and sinister conspiracies afoot. From Tuskeegee medical experiments to Iran Contra, sinister machinations have exercised the worst kinds of abuse of power. Elections have actually been stolen; innocent people have literally been sacrificed.

And (speaking as a pale person and so ‘under correction’), in many communities of color, particularly in Black communities, conspiracy theories (CT’s) form the architecture of awareness of, and resistance to, white-supremacist power structures. I mean, is there any meaningful distinction between the electoral college and the Illuminati? CT’s have served to focus and frame Black experience(s) of a pervasively malevolent and deceptive society founded on ideals of equality and freedom, but built on practices of oppression and enslavement. The irony is that both within and beyond communities of color,  conspiracy theories “have become the most effective community bonding mechanisms of the 21st century,” to borrow from David Brooks, even as they tear some families and communities apart.

ABOVE: An early post attributed to Q.Public on the now-defunct social networking platform “here”.

A PASSAGE FROM THE DEEP STORY OF THE Q.PUBLIC CONSPIRACY THEORY:

“The colonization and enslavement of Europeans began in earnest in roughly the year 1600. From there it spread outward, gradually spanning the globe over the course of the following decades and centuries. Naive to the fragility of their connection to the human family, and fixated on promises of material wealth, Europeans eagerly consented to their capture. While outwardly they prospered, inwardly they decayed and withered. In an imitative process of trauma transferral that would repeat itself down to the most granular level, colonized became colonizer, enslaved became slaver, until, eventually, the individual perpetuates the operation on themselves. Only the most stubborn assertions of humanity — of imagination, empathy, critical thinking— are sufficient to break these chains of causation and coercion. We are entering the final stages of this now, with our last vestiges of agency and clarity in the balance.”

Like any meta-conspiracy theory, Q.Public is a capacious, evolving thing. As new submissions are received in the Crazy / Risky project, Q.Public will adjust to accommodate them. Though it can only ever be partial, you can read a recent, though partial, documentation of the Q.Public Conspiracy Theory here.

Caveat: I use the term “crazy” as a sometime-resident of that nation, as a neurodivergent person, someone practiced in psychosis, neurosis, addiction. I use this “othering” word and its cognates here, and throughout this project, as a means to other ourselves, to gain some outside view of our inner workings. And I reclaim it as a partial prerequisite to sanity in a world running off the rails.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

Digital Critical Thinking: Notes Toward a Curriculum

How to Hack the Conspiracy and Give These Sociopathic Egregores a Conscience

Glossary of terms Common in Q.Public Culture

Shadowland: The Atlantic

Evaluating Information: The Cornerstone of Civic Online Reasoning: Stanford Digital Repository

The Living Online Lab: Empowering youth to be informed, critical, and engaged digital citizens through our unique curriculum.

Continue to PART 4: Q.Public Records Anecdotes and stories about the deep history of the Q.Public conspiracy theory.