Intro

When Megan fell into QAnon, it nearly cost her everything. This is a story about a conspiracy theory and how one person’s radical listening helped Megan break free. I’m Ben Lord. Let’s talk about what we love. 

Story

In June of 2020, Megan opened a text with a link to a video that would change her life. 

On the screen hovered an image of the Earth from space. A voice intoned, “We are about to witness one of the greatest events in human history. The world as we know it is crumbling before our very eyes, and the majority of the world population is not aware of it.” The source of this devastating collapse, the video explained, was a powerful group of billionaires that had used their influence to rig governments and manipulate financial systems . . . things that would outrage the people of the world . . . if they knew. But these real-life evil masterminds had covered their misdeeds with a media smokescreen. The billionaires used misinformation and identity politics to distract the public while they wove their webs of deceit and control. 

Megan was transfixed. She watched that video  . . . and then the next in the series  . . . and the next. After an all-night binge, Megan saw the world in a whole new way. It was like that scene in the Matrix where Neo is given a choice between two pills, the blue one that would return him to blissful ignorance and allow him to live out the rest of his normal life, unchanged. Or the red pill. The pill that would open his eyes to the tragic reality in which he actually lived. In the early morning light of that dawn, Megan had felt like she had taken the red pill and that her life would never be the same. She felt like the grace of God was upon her. 

This video came at an inflection point in Megan’s life. The isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown had hit her hard. And, on its heels, Megan had experienced profound political disappointment. She had ardently supported Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential bid. He was one of the few who had the guts to stand up to the corruption that plagued America. And when, about a month into lockdown, Bernie suspended his campaign, it was a personal and crushing defeat for Megan. The world was broken. And any hope she had that the broken systems could be repaired were dashed. 

Then, along came this series of videos that compellingly explained why. 

This was why good people couldn’t get ahead. This was why people like Bernie, who truly represented the people, didn’t stand a chance. The world needed to know this. It needed people to peirce through the billionaire’s smokescreen. If everyone could see the hidden connections in global events, then they would rise up against this hidden web of manipulation. 

This video series was called The Fall of the Cabal, a popular recruitment tool for the conspiracy theory called QAnon. And Megan was hooked. As she went deeper down the rabbit hole, the ideas got further and further out there. The twelve oligarchs all descended from an ancient Sumerian bloodline. They were trafficking children through pizzerias. History was being rewritten to disguise the influence of extraterrestrials. 

Megan already knew how to evangelize her ideas. She had rallied support for the Sanders campaign on social media. Now, Megan turned those same tools to spreading the insights that she had just learned. 

She posted about how Bill Gates had secretly included microneedling tattoos in the COVID vaccine. Soon, the secret Cabal would be able to scan people like groceries. She expected people to be outraged.

And people were . . . but not at Bill Gates. They focused their outrage at Megan. They mocked her. They attacked her. They unfriended her. In the middle of a pandemic when Megan was already struggling with isolation and loneliness, she had just become even more devastatingly alone. Even her boyfriend, Thomas, was shocked. What had happened to this woman that he thought he knew so well? 

But as Megan lost old friends, she made new connections with the QAnon subculture. There, people praised her for being brave enough to peek behind the curtain even when the sheep-like people of mainstream society rejected her. In QAnon, Megan found people who listened to her, who knew her pain, who understood where she was coming from. 

And through them, Megan’s resolve hardened. Society couldn’t be trusted. The people were anesthetized. If Megan was lonely, it was because the truth was lonely. 

Besides, Megan had survived loneliness before. As a young girl, she had grown up in a house of extremes. Her father was affectionate and supportive, a man who could roll with whatever life brought him. Her mother, by contrast, was intense and distant. Megan’s mother was “the boss,” but that was okay because her father brought the warmth she needed. 

That is . . . until her mother divorced him and threw him out. 

Megan was nine years old when she watched her father drive away, leaving her alone and feeling like a part of herself had been cut away. It was painful, but from the years that followed, Megan had learned what it was like to have no one to rely on except herself. She had learned about what happens when you misplace your trust. 

But Megan wasn’t quite alone in 2020. There were two people who stuck by her even as she sank deeper into a world run by a cryptic cabal of Satanic, cannibalistic child molestors. One was her father. The other was her boyfriend, Thomas. 

Thomas had rejected all of this Q stuff from the start, but he never rejected her. He never left her, the way her other friends had. “I don’t believe what you believe,” he told her, “but I know your heart, and I love you.” Thomas told her that he was willing to keep an open mind and to consider that he might be wrong, if she was willing to do the same. 

He struck a deal with Megan. He would listen to Megan make her case for QAnon for an hour each week. He encouraged her to make the best, the strongest, the most convincing case she could. And he would listen. He’d still be skeptical. But he wouldn’t be closed. And Megan jumped at the chance. 

She poured herself into preparation. She sifted through all the source materials, the videos, the cryptic Q drops, the secret connections that other Anons had pieced together and shared on social media. 

But something was different. 

Thomas was skeptical. She’d have to anticipate the challenges that he would bring. She would need a rock-solid case, free of inconsistencies. So she dug deeper. She tried to track insights to their sources. 

And as she did, something disconcerting began to happen. The stories began to unravel. What had once seemed like evidence now seemed like loops of hearsay. Predictions were made that never came true, but QAnon didn’t notice because there was always some new outrageous prediction to pay attention to instead. There were inconsistencies, but QAnon ignored them or explained them away. 

“There were so many things I was falling for,” she later said, “and it didn’t take much to put holes in them.” 

For a while, Megan tried to hold the ideas together. But then, one day, about nine months after she’d received that fateful text, the whole conspiracy disintegrated, like sand between her fingers. It wasn’t real. None of it was real. 

Megan didn’t make a big announcement. She didn’t post anything to Facebook. She just turned off her device and quietly began to put her life back together. 

When I first read this story, I was profoundly impressed by what Megan did. Changing your mind is hard . . . especially when the ideas that you’re changing have emotional roots that extend deep into your past like Megan’s did. 

But I was even more deeply struck by what Thomas did. As soon as I read about his challenge, even before I learned about its outcome, I had this rush of recognition. “Yes,” I thought,  “This is right. That’s what I wish I would have said.” 

But it’s really easy not to . . . especially when people are doing and saying things that are misguided and hurtful. My first reaction isn’t to listen to those people. My instinct is to try to fix them. 

But the people who tried to ‘fix’ Megan didn’t get her to think or grow or change her mind. They just pushed her further down the rabbit hole. Because every time someone tries to fix you, the subtext is that they think that you are broken. 

Listening says, “ I respect you. I care about you, and you are worth the most precious thing that I have . . . my attention.”  

Thomas’s listening wasn’t a trick. It wasn’t a secret reverse psychology way to win an argument. And if he’d treated it like that, it wouldn’t have helped Megan. The internet is full of people trying to win arguments by catching their opponents in some contradiction with aggressive questioning. And, mostly, their “opponents” recognize the game and shore up their rhetorical defenses. But Thomas wasn’t trying to catch Meghan with some sleight of hand debate move. 

He loved her. And love doesn’t try to fix people. It tries to understand . . . even when it doesn’t agree. 

And, it seems, that was what Meghan really needed. 

In a way, what Thomas was really doing was holding hands with the nine-year-old girl whose father had been exiled, and who desperately wanted him back. If she was going to learn to trust again, she would need someone who could trust her . . . trust her to find her own way. 

Right now, one of the things I want most is to heal my broken country. 

And I don’t know how to do it. I see so many of my countryfolk cheering on things that seem, to me, profoundly misguided and deeply hurtful. I see so many others throwing up their hands in cynicism and despair. Saying things like, “Those people cannot be convinced.” And wondering aloud how stupid they must be to be so obviously wrong. I am embarrassed to admit it, but I have thought these things. 

And I understand Megan’s friends who cut ties with her and told her she was crazy. I see myself in them. Because there’s part of me that wants to do that. 

I also see the Megan in myself . . . a person doing their best to help, who is easily swept away by ideas, especially ones that powerfully and emotionally connect to my own experiences. 

But mostly, when I read this story, it made me want to find the Thomas in myself . . . the one who is humble enough to be both skeptical and curious. The one who can sit through all the bullshit with composure and still humbly and genuinely say, “I don’t believe what you believe, but I know your heart, and I love you, and I’ll listen.” 

Outro

I read Megan and Thomas’s story in Jamil Zaki’s book, Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness. While the storytelling and commentary are my own, I have tried to faithfully adhere to the account in Zaki’s book. If you like I Heart This, you’d probably like Hope for Cynics. I recommend you check it out. 

And if you like I Heart This, please take a few seconds to follow our Facebook page. We’re so close to having 100 followers there. Maybe you could be the one that helps us reach that landmark. 

I Heart This is written, edited, and produced by me, Ben Lord. Our logo was designed by Briony Morrow-Cribbs. Our website is iheartthispodcast.com. You can email me at ben@iheartthispodcast.com. Thank you so much for listening. And, as always, Be kind. Be curious, and be thankful.