The moment QAnon took the person I love most

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57369349

It was January 2021 when Nicole's 14-year-old son took her to a hospital emergency room. Hours earlier, Nicole had been driving out of her small hometown in Kansas when she started having palpitations, and her arm and face went numb. "I thought I was having a heart attack."

Nicole had experienced a panic attack after 10 months of watching her mother disappear into her phone screen, and a world of conspiracy theories. Specifically, QAnon - an expansive movement that has inspired protests, split families and continues to find new followers online.

Doctors at the hospital told Nicole that they knew what she was going through. They, too, had heard about QAnon, as it had swept through the small towns in her state.

QAnon is a wide-ranging, completely unfounded theory that former US President Donald Trump is waging a secret war against elite Satan-worshipping paedophiles in government, business and the media.

*snip*

[CrispyQ]

1. I have two family members & one on the verge.

And those are the ones I know of. There's a wing of the family I hardly ever talk to. I'm sure they're all trumpers, but maybe not all Q-anon. The Q-anon ones are gone, though. You can't even talk to them.

[Midnight Writer]

2. My best friend of over 60 years is gone to Q.

We went to grade school together, were outcast hippies together in a small town, protested the Viet Nam War together, shared an apartment in college, hitchhiked coast to coast.

Now he is totally gone, a glassy-eyed true believer in whatever the Right throws out there.

There is no talking to him.

He is a stranger.

[Karadeniz]

3. What a waste! I'm so sorry!

[Irish_Dem]

4. It's like Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

[crickets]

5. So sad, and frightening that this is still going on. nt