What now for the disciples of Trump Christ?

KarlLBKarlLB Shipmate
edited January 21 in Purgatory
I was musing this morning.

I recall seeing on other people's FB feeds and occasional news articles people deep within the QAnon bullcrap who were firmly convinced Trump was the Chosen One who was going to lead the kidnapped children out of their underground prisons and bring down the Deep State. Those of a religious bent were extending this to Trump being God's Chosen One who was etc. etc. etc.

Even after his election defeat they were still going on about how the truth would out and he would serve a second term. They seemed very precise; Trump was going to be President on 21st January; Biden was not going to be inaugurated. God had it all under control.

I suspect that some thoughts like this were behind the Capitol storming business; people believing they were God's/Fate's/whatever's instrument in bringing about the vindication of their Orange Messiah.

It struck me that once that failed, his followers were a bit like the disciples after the Crucifixion. Except Trump's presidency will not have a resurrection. It is over. Biden has succeeded him. He is no more. He has failed.

What will these people do now? What will those who confidently said that God had told them clearly that Trump would serve a second term say now? Will it precipitate crises in faith? Will the QAnon believers go on believing in the Deep State, now that a key part of that whole belief system, Trump on his white charger, has ridden off into the distance with no dragon slain?

Anyone closer to these people know? How are they parsing the failure of their Messiah to live up to their claims about him?
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Comments

  • Barnabas62Barnabas62 Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host, Epiphanies Host
    I suppose the precedent is the recurring religious belief that the date of the Apocalypse has been revealed in scripture. Sects which have survived such incorrect forecasts retain members by recognising they got their sums wrong.

    The abiding attraction of cults is that they give people community and meaning (via particular revelations). I think Qanon will be around for a while. It may fragment of course. Some will repudiate Trump but hold onto the central story. Some will defend Trump and say wait and see. Some will recognise that they have been conned (or Qanoned).
  • BoogieBoogie Shipmate
    edited January 21
    I think trump will lick his wounds for a while then he will form a new party. Lots of rallies involving adulation of their dear leader. The nutters will join it, hopefully leaving sensible republicans to be - sensible.

    That way the right wing vote will be split for a loooong time to come. Win win.
  • Gramps49Gramps49 Shipmate
    This is from an (American) Evangelical Theologian A Message to Trump Christian Supporters.[/url.
  • This reminds me of "Hail Bacon, full of grease, the Lard is with thee"

    Though the United Church of Bacon might object (it is actually a thing this church).
  • CrœsosCrœsos Shipmate
    KarlLB wrote: »
    It struck me that once that failed, his followers were a bit like the disciples after the Crucifixion. Except Trump's presidency will not have a resurrection. It is over. Biden has succeeded him. He is no more. He has failed.

    Something more akin to the Great Disappointment then?
    KarlLB wrote: »
    Anyone closer to these people know? How are they parsing the failure of their Messiah to live up to their claims about him?

    I'm not closer to any Trumpists or QAnon cultists than the internet, but most of the ones I've seen have been working through the various Kübler-Ross stages of grief. Most of them seem to be in denial (including a theory that around midnight before the inauguration all the malefactors were rounded up by Trump and are now in office under death threat unless they carry out the will of shadow-president* Trump), anger, or bargaining (like the QAnon follower who posted "To and and all federal agents browsing this website: every post I have ever made on this website is satire").
  • Gramps49Gramps49 Shipmate
    Crœsos wrote: »
    KarlLB wrote: »
    It struck me that once that failed, his followers were a bit like the disciples after the Crucifixion. Except Trump's presidency will not have a resurrection. It is over. Biden has succeeded him. He is no more. He has failed.

    Something more akin to the Great Disappointment then?
    KarlLB wrote: »
    Anyone closer to these people know? How are they parsing the failure of their Messiah to live up to their claims about him?

    I'm not closer to any Trumpists or QAnon cultists than the internet, but most of the ones I've seen have been working through the various Kübler-Ross stages of grief. Most of them seem to be in denial (including a theory that around midnight before the inauguration all the malefactors were rounded up by Trump and are now in office under death threat unless they carry out the will of shadow-president* Trump), anger, or bargaining (like the QAnon follower who posted "To and and all federal agents browsing this website: every post I have ever made on this website is satire").

    I have a friend who is a radical feminist in Georgia. She posted a Q video from Parler on her Facebook in order to refute it. She found herself restricted on Facebook. Luckily, the ban will be lifted this Saturday.
  • Amanda B ReckondwythAmanda B Reckondwyth Mystery Worship Editor
    Boogie wrote: »
    I think [you-know-who] . . . will form a new party. Lots of rallies involving adulation of their dear leader. The nutters will join it, hopefully leaving sensible republicans to be - sensible.

    And, if we're lucky, the media will completely ignore it. I still contend that had they done so four years ago, we would have been spared the disaster that he was.
  • Gramps49Gramps49 Shipmate
    It was -45 here yesterday.
  • So what are the likes of Paula White-Cain saying now? Having given all these "prophecies" about angels coming to win the day of Trump, how are they handling the reality? I am guessing in part that they are simply moving on and not referring back to their "failed" prophecies.
  • BroJamesBroJames Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host
    …but today it’s +46?
  • KarlLBKarlLB Shipmate
    So what are the likes of Paula White-Cain saying now? Having given all these "prophecies" about angels coming to win the day of Trump, how are they handling the reality? I am guessing in part that they are simply moving on and not referring back to their "failed" prophecies.

    Yeah, that's what I'm asking.
  • chrisstileschrisstiles Shipmate
    edited January 21
    KarlLB wrote: »
    So what are the likes of Paula White-Cain saying now? Having given all these "prophecies" about angels coming to win the day of Trump, how are they handling the reality? I am guessing in part that they are simply moving on and not referring back to their "failed" prophecies.

    Yeah, that's what I'm asking.

    Julia Duinn has a good piece over on the getreligion blog: https://www.getreligion.org/getreligion/2021/1/19/when-covering-the-trump-prophets-listen-up-heavenly-inauguration-is-in-the-wings

    Within the leadership itself there is a mix of people who have doubled down, a minority who have recanted and the majority have gone on without comment (and will no doubt move to the next thing in time). From personal experience the charismatic movement is very good at memory-holing as a tactic. I suspect that for most the struggle against the 'Marxist' administration will take most of their energy (this language isn't confined to charismaticism and has been repeated at the fringes of conservative thought - and is common in Republican circles more generally).

    It's interesting too that Charisma Magazine have moved from hedging on Q to publishing mild admonitions against Q.
  • Penny SPenny S Shipmate
    edited January 21
    Someone who was a friend has been tweeting, or retweeting, that Biden is not legally president because the oath was taken at 11.57, not midday, and he did not swear to defend the constitution against foreigners or -can't remember the other word and I'm not going back there. Therefore Trump is still president.
    One of her retweets showed a bust behind Biden's desk which was of a labour organiser "this shows the direction he is coming from" (paraphrase).
    I've asked for prayers for her over the weeks - they haven't worked yet. I think she is talking too much for God to get through. And listening too much to the voices of the mad.
  • Penny S wrote: »
    Someone who was a friend has been tweeting, or retweeting, that Biden is not legally president because the oath was taken at 11.57, not midday, and he did not swear to defend the constitution against foreigners or -can't remember the other word
    “Against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Those words are part of the oath required by federal statute for the vice-president and all other federal officials—except president. The president’s oath is set forth in the Constitution, and is the oath Biden took yesterday.

  • Penny SPenny S Shipmate
    That may be useful if any contact occurs between us. I suspect it won't. She dropped a number of Democrat friends because she was told they were communist, and I've been waiting for her to find out what we are. My reaction to the Latino labour organiser bust was "that's good"!
  • Penny S wrote: »
    One of her retweets showed a bust behind Biden's desk which was of a labour organiser "this shows the direction he is coming from" (paraphrase).

    Well, that much is true, anyway. Yes, that's why it is there.

    I was much taken by internet chatter about Bernie Sanders' coat-and-mittens combo at the inauguration. It was a nice trip down memory lane, back to Michael Foot's 'donkey jacket' (which is much swisher than a real donkey jacket, in the flesh, and can be viewed at Manchester's own People's History Museum - highly recommended).
  • Amanda B ReckondwythAmanda B Reckondwyth Mystery Worship Editor
    Nick Tamen wrote: »
    “Against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Those words are part of the oath required by federal statute for the vice-president and all other federal officials—except president. The president’s oath is set forth in the Constitution, and is the oath Biden took yesterday.

    And Penny's friend's clock is three minutes slow.
  • CrœsosCrœsos Shipmate
    Penny S wrote: »
    Someone who was a friend has been tweeting, or retweeting, that Biden is not legally president because the oath was taken at 11.57, not midday, and he did not swear to defend the constitution against foreigners or -can't remember the other word and I'm not going back there. Therefore Trump is still president.

    One of the more irritating characteristics of American conservatives is that despite calling themselves "originalists" or "strict textualists" or some other moniker to indicate how seriously they treat the law, most often what they're in favor of is whatever they think the law should be rather than what it actually says. For those who are wondering, the presidential oath as laid out in the Constitution is:
    I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

    If you were paying close attention to yesterday's inauguration you probably noticed that Kamala Harris swore a different (and longer) oath because the vice presidential oath of office is not explicitly laid out in the Constitution. The exact wording is established by law and cribbed heavily from the oaths given to members of Congress.

    Getting hung up on technicalities like this reminds me the time a spokesman for Senate candidate Roy Moore stated that it was the law that elected officials had to be sworn in on a Bible and therefore Muslims shouldn't be allowed to hold office in the United States. He had this look of gobsmacked confusion when Jake Tapper told him that the law didn't actually say that.
  • Surely he needs to have taken the oath just before 12 so that he can lawfully assume control at midday.
  • CrœsosCrœsos Shipmate
    edited January 21
    Pendragon wrote: »
    Surely he needs to have taken the oath just before 12 so that he can lawfully assume control at midday.

    Section 1 of the Twentieth Amendment states (in part) "The terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January . . . " It does not specify whether the oath is supposed to be administered prior to this or afterwards. There was a bit of a kerfuffle at Obama's first inauguration. John Roberts read the words of the oath incorrectly, which caused Obama to mis-state them. Roberts re-administered the oath the next day just in case anyone wanted to make an issue out of it. I'm not sure anyone's willing to argue that there was an interregnum of one day when Joe Biden was legally president.
  • Pendragon wrote: »
    Surely he needs to have taken the oath just before 12 so that he can lawfully assume control at midday.

    I don't know if that's the reasoning or what, but he did in fact take it about 10 minutes early (I accidentally broadcast the whole oath to the vaccination room when I was there, thinking I was tuning in early!) and an article I read stated that it was always done that way, a tad early. I don't suppose it matters. I mean, supposing you-know-who was in fact a "real" president (in the sense of someone who behaved presidentially and had presidential priorities), it would simply mean that there was a ten-minute period when America had two people sworn to defend her and the Constitution, etc. Which would not normally be a problem. (I note that there is no official time limit in the oath itself that states starting and stopping times.)
  • Martin54Martin54 Shipmate
    edited January 21
    Inspired by @Penny S. Years ago my boss and I looked out the window at the city functioning slickly and shook our heads because we knew our city slicker customers were absolute idiots for assuming we knew what we were doing. We were smarter than them in so far as we knew we didn't. But it all works. The system works. The asylum works. Regardless of the remarkable number of lunatics and incompetent keepers. It's the rituals that keep it all going.
  • Nick Tamen wrote: »
    “Against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Those words are part of the oath required by federal statute for the vice-president and all other federal officials—except president. The president’s oath is set forth in the Constitution, and is the oath Biden took yesterday.

    And Penny's friend's clock is three minutes slow.
    As @Lamb Chopped says, Penny’s friend’s clock is fast. My daughter had a class scheduled to let out at 11:50, and she was worried she’d miss the oath. When Biden and CJ Roberts were coming up for the oath, I texted her “Biden is being sworn in now.” The time-stamp for that text is 11:48.

  • So what are the likes of Paula White-Cain saying now? Having given all these "prophecies" about angels coming to win the day of Trump, how are they handling the reality? I am guessing in part that they are simply moving on and not referring back to their "failed" prophecies.

    This is the typical M.O. for failed prophets.
    Gramps49 wrote: »
    This is from an (American) Evangelical Theologian A Message to Trump Christian Supporters..

    Quote from this article:
    It’s one thing to dismiss the teachings of his faith as strange and unlikely, he notes, but “if people walk away from the church because they don’t believe that we really believe what we say, then that’s a crisis.” This is what he fears will be the legacy of an era in which people of faith put so much faith in a President. “There is an entire generation of people who are growing cynical that religion is just a means to some other end.”

    Horse. Barn. U.R. Fucked.



  • For my sins, I have checked out Paula White-Cain's latest video. Not all of it - she goes on for about 90 minutes and there was only so much I could take. I don't think she mentions Trump or the election once but rails against people who have dared to criticise her - especially Christians. Then she starts crying and leading people a time of repentance, although it wasn't clear to me what the people are supposed to repenting of. Failure to believe enough??

    As far as I could see, no hint of apology or "I got it wrong".
  • CaissaCaissa Shipmate
    QAnon if not dead has been grievously wounded. Hopefully, most of its adherents will fade into the woodwork and the "reasonable" wing of the Republican party will reassert itself. I am hoping Trump spent al of his capital over the last 2 months and will not be able to mount a challenge for 24.
  • Dave WDave W Shipmate
    Hey, Paula’s married to Journey keyboardist Jonathan Cain! (He wrote the hit song “Faithfully” ... for his first wife.)
  • CrœsosCrœsos Shipmate
    edited January 21
    Caissa wrote: »
    QAnon if not dead has been grievously wounded. Hopefully, most of its adherents will fade into the woodwork and the "reasonable" wing of the Republican party will reassert itself.

    In any reasonable narrative that would be the case, but this narrative is inherently unreasonable. For example, the "Pizzagate" conspiracy theory went down in flames when someone took an AR-15 into the pizza restaurant where the vile deeds were supposed to be happening in the basement and discovered the place doesn't even have a basement. You'd think that would be enough to permanently destroy a theory's credibility, but eight months later QAnon was launched recycling most of the same stuff.
  • Martin54Martin54 Shipmate
    Guys, just leave the crazies to it. I mean I'm crazy. I'm not a well man. But it'll be all right because sooner or later someone pretends to be a grownup, like Grampa Joe. I like him. He's nice. Even the open carry loons will like him despite themselves. I mean dammit, he's all American. Looks and sounds the part. Well, finished the single malt, time for the meds. Just don't read the crazies. It's catching. They make you crazy. And no matter that they seem to be everywhere, there's always a patch of blue big enough to make a pair of sailor's trousers.
  • Dave W wrote: »
    Hey, Paula’s married to Journey keyboardist Jonathan Cain! (He wrote the hit song “Faithfully” ... for his first wife.)

    That's deliciously ironic.
  • I've wondered about who "Q" might be--maybe one or more of the following:

    --teenagers or college students who started it as a prank, then found it got serious;

    --one or more T relatives ("Ooo, look what I can do to help!");

    --a project by college students of politics, psych, sociology, religion, etc.;

    --a T opponent who thought *surely* this would discredit T;

    --themes and variations with other players;

    --and/or someone else took it over at some point;

    --and/or someone who read "Foucault's Pendulum", started it as a joke, then fell into it theirself;*

    I'm presuming it's not the Q Collective from the "Star Trek" universe.
    ;)

    *NOTE: I do NOT recommend "Foucault's Pendulum"--one of the bleakest, most disturbing books I've ever read.
  • Dave WDave W Shipmate
    mousethief wrote: »
    Dave W wrote: »
    Hey, Paula’s married to Journey keyboardist Jonathan Cain! (He wrote the hit song “Faithfully” ... for his first wife.)

    That's deliciously ironic.

    Apparently this is "third time's the charm" for both of them.
  • TelfordTelford Shipmate
    God forgot that The Donald was the Chosen One
  • Gramps49Gramps49 Shipmate
    Tell your friend that Mr Trump had control of the Nuclear Football until 12:00 hours on 20 January 2021.

    Since there were very serious threats to Biden's life, I can imagine the Inauguration committee decided to move the time of the oath of the office just a few minutes forward to throw off any potential sniper or drone attack.
  • Until Trump was elected, I kind of enjoyed gawking at the maddies from afar. But now they are too close to home and there are too many of them for that. I think treading carefully is the order of the day.
    Boogie wrote: »
    I think trump will lick his wounds for a while then he will form a new party. Lots of rallies involving adulation of their dear leader. The nutters will join it, hopefully leaving sensible republicans to be - sensible.

    That way the right wing vote will be split for a loooong time to come. Win win.

    I reckon the fracturing of the Republican Party will have two possible consequences. First, it will keep the Democrats in power. Second, it will halt the Party's drift to the left, as moderate Republicans and their money begin to drift over to the winning side of politics. I state this as a concrete debating point, but don't think the discussion is worth having until Trump goes the full Bull Moose.

    Don't get me wrong. I am itching for Trump to do this, not as a friend of America but for the sport of watching what happens. My sincere hope is that the next for years are focused on the boring bread and butter issues of dealing with the Coronavirus, rebuilding the economy, and doing the important reforms needed for the USA to be a fairer and easier place to live.
  • CrœsosCrœsos Shipmate
    Golden Key wrote: »
    I've wondered about who "Q" might be--maybe one or more of the following:

    --teenagers or college students who started it as a prank, then found it got serious;

    --one or more T relatives ("Ooo, look what I can do to help!");

    --a project by college students of politics, psych, sociology, religion, etc.;

    --a T opponent who thought *surely* this would discredit T;

    --themes and variations with other players;

    --and/or someone else took it over at some point;

    --and/or someone who read "Foucault's Pendulum", started it as a joke, then fell into it theirself;

    You forgot:

    --Russian troll farm;
  • Russian troll farm seems very likely.
  • {sweetly}

    Included under "themes and variations with other players".
    ;)
  • Simon Toad wrote: »
    Until Trump was elected, I kind of enjoyed gawking at the maddies from afar. But now they are too close to home and there are too many of them for that. I think treading carefully is the order of the day.
    Boogie wrote: »
    I think trump will lick his wounds for a while then he will form a new party. Lots of rallies involving adulation of their dear leader. The nutters will join it, hopefully leaving sensible republicans to be - sensible.

    That way the right wing vote will be split for a loooong time to come. Win win.

    I reckon the fracturing of the Republican Party will have two possible consequences. First, it will keep the Democrats in power. Second, it will halt the Party's drift to the left, as moderate Republicans and their money begin to drift over to the winning side of politics. I state this as a concrete debating point, but don't think the discussion is worth having until Trump goes the full Bull Moose.

    I would have thought a divided opposition would allow the Democrats to tack left as they could win seats with fewer votes, so they could afford to lose a few centrists.
  • Crœsos wrote: »
    Golden Key wrote: »
    I've wondered about who "Q" might be--maybe one or more of the following:

    --teenagers or college students who started it as a prank, then found it got serious;

    --one or more T relatives ("Ooo, look what I can do to help!");

    --a project by college students of politics, psych, sociology, religion, etc.;

    --a T opponent who thought *surely* this would discredit T;

    --themes and variations with other players;

    --and/or someone else took it over at some point;

    --and/or someone who read "Foucault's Pendulum", started it as a joke, then fell into it theirself;

    You forgot:

    --Russian troll farm;

    Q anon for liberals.
  • Penny SPenny S Shipmate
    edited January 22
    We have got very worried at how two of our friends have gone down the rabbit hole. Both intelligent women.
    One has been ill and found genuine help which worked from people on the fringes of sensible - cut out all wheat and allied grains from diet. This has led to "human beings aren't meant to eat grains" and hence down the rabbit hole. (The Neolithic expansion in population is irrelevant.) She thinks it is OK to join demonstrations against doctors outside hospitals - and these demos can be vicious about the "fake" covid, and the "fake" vaccines - because doctors are dismissive of patients and do not listen to them. Knowing how she got there doesn't help to pull her out. She doesn't seem to have worrying attitudes to Trump.
    The other seems to have got in via a strand in Judaism which can be glimpsed in the TV programme about some evangelical support for Israel. I have hoped and prayed that she would come across a rabbi with more sensible ideas, but it is clear from her tweeting that if she does, she goes off online to other rabbis who support her views about God having chosen Trump, and Biden and Harris being useless. She gets angry if challenged. We haven't had much contact for a few months. I tried directing her to a few pieces of evidence that she is wrong about covid and vaccines and 5G and... including the antisemitic strand in the Cardinal she thought well of, but all I get is more "evidence" from her having "done her own research" - without peer reviewed citations.
    Both of them "do their own research" whch seems to the a Q-Anon theme.
    To me, "doing your own research" should involve something of the following:
    1. Doing practical work in collecting data from observation or experiment to test out hypotheses.
    2. Doing literature searches to investigate the work of people who have done the above, which have been peer reviewed, and including checking out the sources they cite.
    It should not include an assumption that everything in Wikipedia - including the references at the bottom - is deliberately wrong, or that anything on the "filthy" BBC is deliberately wrong, or that the "main stream media" is deliberately wrong, and predicated on the establishment of a new world order via the administration of Bill Gates vaccines and nano-technology to control the populations of the world, unless there is independent evidence that this is so, derived from processes 1 and 2 above, and confirmed by sources which are not Q-Anon or its clones.
    Ummm, I haven't been doing my own research on this according to my own rules.
  • HuiaHuia Shipmate

    I would have thought a divided opposition would allow the Democrats to tack left as they could win seats with fewer votes, so they could afford to lose a few centrists.

    That's an interesting question. The last election here (NZ) resulted in a landslide for Labour. They attracted votes from National (the more conservative large party), and electorates that had been solidly National for decades were won by Labour. It seems to me that they have responded by moving more towards the centre, rather than further left because they are hoping to keep at least some of those supporters in the long term.
  • Golden Key wrote: »
    I've wondered about who "Q" might be--maybe one or more of the following:

    I think it helps to understand the cultural spaces in which it came to prominence. There's a long history on message boards of posters appearing suddenly and claiming to reveal hidden information of various sorts, coupled with was the deliberately absurdist and provocative style of 4chan. The difference in the case of QAnon (as opposed to HLIAnon or CIAAnon) is that it first crossed over to reddit (4channers creating a subreddit to absorb debate, a lot of which was actually hostile to Q) and then social media via YouTube (profiting from the phenomena of streamers cross promoting each other, just like many movements before it, including the new Atheists, Gamergate etc).

    Q started on 4chan and later moved to 8chan/8kun, and at this point it seems very likely that Ron Watkins (8kun administrator) either authored some of the more recent posts or at least knows the person/people behind the current incarnation of Q.

    I think what you see in Q is a confluence of where a particular culture meets a particular way of making money via the current internet infrastructure.
  • Martin54Martin54 Shipmate
    As with @undead_rat here, if there's a reachable person in there, go for that. I have to with my stepsons. Not on a doomed Evangelical mission to get them to repent of their condition, to change their stories; don't talk to the borderline madness, the illness. That's futile. Contagious. I do find ways to resonate, to understand, to see where they're coming from, but like with Muslim colleagues, why would one ever try and dismantle what one can't possibly replace? One can always find common ground and get along.
  • Penny SPenny S Shipmate
    Hopefully. But they do try conversion.
    I see some R woman on the Capitol is filing papers of impeachment against Biden! According to the Twitter account I wasn't going to look at - but there's a news story about a Haredi wedding of 400 people broken up by police in North London, and I thought she might have something to say about it. But no.
  • Martin54Martin54 Shipmate
    You see blokes can ALWAYS talk football. It really does pay to have a shrivelled corpus callosum.
  • KarlLBKarlLB Shipmate
    Martin54 wrote: »
    You see blokes can ALWAYS talk football.

    I can't.

    I only found out who Alex Ferguson was when he retired. I knew he was something to do with football but that was all. If it's possible to have a negative level of interest in something, that's me and football.
  • BoogieBoogie Shipmate
    Martin54 wrote: »
    You see blokes can ALWAYS talk football. It really does pay to have a shrivelled corpus callosum.

    My brother can’t. Like me, he’s never watched a football match in his life.
  • KarlLBKarlLB Shipmate
    edited January 22
    Boogie wrote: »
    Martin54 wrote: »
    You see blokes can ALWAYS talk football. It really does pay to have a shrivelled corpus callosum.

    My brother can’t. Like me, he’s never watched a football match in his life.

    I have; I was dragged because boy #1's school was given some free tickets. That's two hours of my life I'm owed back. I've never been so bored.

    The assumption that blokes can always talk football has been one of the banes of my life. I listen politely as they go on and on and on about their specialist interest, despite it being a matter of complete and utter tedium to me, but the moment I make mention of any of mine they run away and never talk to me again.

    I have a theory that loads of blokes are undiagnosed autistics whose specialist subject just happens to be Queens Park Rangers, an absolute obsession with which doesn't raise concerns the way an equally absolute obsession with historical linguistics does.
  • Penny S wrote: »
    Both of them "do their own research" whch seems to the a Q-Anon theme.
    To me, "doing your own research" should involve something of the following:
    1. Doing practical work in collecting data from observation or experiment to test out hypotheses.
    2. Doing literature searches to investigate the work of people who have done the above, which have been peer reviewed, and including checking out the sources they cite.

    It strikes me that DIY research is a bit like DIY plumbing or DIY car maintenance. If you know what you're doing, the results can be beneficial and satisfying, but it's easy to take on something you don't realise is beyond your capabilities with disastrous results. I once discovered this after connecting a washing-machine in my first-floor flat, and so did my downstairs neighbours.
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