Article:

Truth and truths-to-come: Investigating viral rumors in ‘Q: Into the Storm’

This article interrogates how Q: Into the Storm (HBO, 2021) pursues the conspiratorial thinking of QAnon adherents in two ways: first, as an investigative docuseries into the world of rumors, mapping the phenomenon for a wider audience, and second, as filmmaker Cullen Hoback’s entrance into QAnon as an alternative reality game (ARG), interacting with the sociotechnical network underpinning it. Both modes train viewers to anticipate truths-to-come, key to enjoying both media forms. Taking rumor-tellers seriously, Hoback intervenes in QAnon’s effects while indulging viewers’ prurient interest in the conspiratorial logic the series characterises as socially harmful. Considered in light of Bernard Stiegler’s concerns about the contemporary industrialisation of consciousness, the series fails as a consciousness-raising endeavor. We view Storm ambivalently as both an effective usurpation of such thinking and a reinstantiation of it.