Explaining QAnon as Lived Religion

Abstract This chapter examines the complex history of QAnon. This movement has fluctuated and evolved with changes in the sociopolitical landscape and in the multiple users likely behind the Q account. The chapter explores how framing QAnon as a lived religion helps to explain the nature and development of this conspiracy theory. Along the way, it also demonstrates how QAnon has gone through three stages of existence: proto-QAnon, canonical QAnon, and apocryphal QAnon. Finally, it shows how distinguishing between those three phases helps us to better understand QAnon.