Down the Digital Rabbit Hole: True Crime in the Age of 4Chan and Twitter // Chris Martin
Chris Martin looks at true crime through exploring conspiracy theories, QAnon, and the concept of the armchair detective as part of our guest edited month “My Dark Places.”
OnMarch 13, 2019, the head of the Gambino mafia family, Francesco"Franky Boy" Cali, was gunned down outside his home.Surprisingly, this was not the result of a long-standing vendetta or internal mafia power play. For the shooter, Anthony Comello, this was the culmination of months of investigation and the climax to the true crime story in which he claimed the role of the protagonist. Anthony had not intended for this to be an assassination; indeed, the shooting was the result of a bungled attempt at a citizen’s arrest.
However, this was no ordinary concerned citizen wishing to make a statement against organized crime. Anthony was a fervent participant in the QAnon conspiracy theory and believed he was acting as part of a wider movement against the “deep state” and claimed President Trump himself had endorsed the action. Spouting QAnon catchphrases and sporting ink-laced palms covered in crudely drawn “Q”s in his initial court appearance, it would be easy to write this incident off as the product of mere delusion. A textbook case of an individual with a dangerous obsession. To be fair, that is likely true.
However, the rabbit hole goes deeper.
For those mercifully uninitiated into the digital fever dream that is the QAnon movement, a brief introduction. Sprouting from the notorious 4Chan image boards, this protean collection of conspiracies and prophecies contends, among other things, that the world is ruled by a cabal of pedophile satanist liberals, that Donald Trump is engaged in a shadow war with these deep state Illuminati, and that John F.Kennedy Jr. is alive and will run for president in 2020 as part of the “Great Awakening.” All of this stems from their anonymous prophet, Q, who claims to be a double agent within the deep state who gains his moniker from having Q level security clearance. The cryptic, often nonsensical posts attributed to Q are puzzled over and analyzed by his followers with an almost religious fervor.
It all sounds like a bad Phillip K. Dick novel, but for those invested in it, QAnon quickly becomes more real than their day to day lives.Instead of poor, lonely or otherwise isolated individuals, they have recast themselves as intrepid film noir detectives, dredging the seedy underbelly of the internet to uncover the terrible truth at the heart of the world. Melodramatic, to be sure, but also deeply appealing to someone lacking any sense of agency in their lives.
WithQ’s cryptic clues doled out at regular intervals, QAnon devotees congregate on forums and Twitter to craft elaborate connections between Q’s statements and real-world events. Amidst the paranoia and obsession, there is a strange sense of community and purpose, reflected in their creed: “For where we go one, we go all.”
None of this should come as a surprise, at least in the broad strokes. It is the mantra of our age that we live in isolated, alienated times.The daily struggle of trying to discern the signal from the noise of popular news media has turned us all into detectives, engaged in an endlessly uphill struggle for the truth that would make Sam Spade feel right at home.
Think back to 2014 and the release of the podcast Serial. Each episode release came with an exhilarating sense of discovery, the rush of dopamine as another clue is discovered by the intrepid narrator, and by extension, the audience. As the audience becomes more invested, listeners start to feel like armchair detectives working alongside the show. Indeed, many a fan community emerged to conduct their own further detective work, creating elaborate theories above and beyond the show’s own investigation. While certainly not the first True Crime sensation, Serial capitalized on the interactive and communal aspects of the digital medium, affordances simply not present in earlier formats. In the tumult of online discourse, the line between listener and participant becomes easily blurred, creating a sense of investment in the investigation that a simple print news story cannot match.
While it would be unfair to cast ardent Serial fans in the same light as Q’s fervent devotees, there is a shared commonality: the sense of agency and community that comes from a shared purpose, a wrong to be righted, a mystery to be solved. The difference lies in the nature of the mystery—one is grounded in real-world locations and evidence, while the other simply absorbs every emerging news story into itself.
Back in 2016, another Q supporter stormed Comet Ping Pong Pizza inWashington DC, claiming there was a Hilary Clinton-led pedophile ring hidden in the building’s basement. It was easy to dismiss this ludicrous claim, as Comet Ping Pong did not have a basement, let alone a child sex dungeon. Yet In 2019, the QAnon crowd has found away to feel vindicated. Recent revelations surrounding JeffreyEpstein’s child sex ring for the ultra-wealthy and the suspicious circumstances surrounding his death are likely to bring in a new crop of conspiracy-ready initiates. With Epstein’s flight logs showing connections to two US presidents, Israeli and French politicians, and even the British Royal family, any self-appointed QAnon detective has enough material to build out their case for years to come.
It is easy to dismiss them as a delusional fringe, though it might be more accurate to see them as the canaries in the coal mine. While QAnon is a cobbled-together absurd conspiracy, it draws from the very relatable sense of dislocation, alienation, and confusion that permeates our lives. To those who cannot seem to solve the mystery of their own misery, it’s comforting to imagine that suffering is part of a far grander story, one that places each of them as the protagonist in their own true crime tale. It’s a conspiracy so vast it can never be solved, but then again, solving it would defeat the purpose. QAnon exists to provide context and agency in a seemingly incomprehensible world. A sign of the strange times we live in, and likely to get stranger still.
Chris Martin is a prospective PhD student at the University of Waterloo, focusing on rhetoric and communication design. When not engaged with the endless workload of academia, he spends a likely unhealthy amount of time soaking up the maddening discourse of Twitter and Reddit.