Advertising
Supported by
The False Theory of Democrats, now fed through QAnon and the teens in TikTok, involves new goals like Justin Bieber.
By Cecilia Kang and She Frenkel
WASHINGTON – Four minutes after the birth of a video posted on Instagram last month, Justin Bieber leaned over the camera and replaced the front of his black-knit cap. For some of his 130 million followers, it’s a sign.
In the video, someone had posted a comment asking Mr. Bieber to touch his hat if he was the victim of a child dealing with netpaintings called PizzaGate. Thousands of comments came, and there has been no indication that Bieber saw the message. But the pop star’s risk-free gesture sparked a wave of online activity, which highlighted the resurgence of early conspiracy theories on social media.
Viewers temporarily posted many videos online analyzing Mr. Bieber’s action. The videos have been translated into Spanish, Portuguese and other languages, accumulating millions of views. Fans left thousands of comments about Mr. Bieber’s social media posts, asking if he was safe. Within days, searches for “Justin and PizzaGate” exploded on Google, and the hashtag #savebieber began to make its way.
Four years ago, before the 2016 presidential election, the unsubstantiated idea that Hillary Clinton and the Democratic elites were running a child sex trafficking network at a Washington pizzeria on the Internet, highlights how an outlandish concept can also flourish. on social media, and how harmful it will be. In December 2016, an armed watchman appeared in the position of eating with an attack rifle and opened fire in a closet.
This time, PizzaGate works through a younger generation that is active in TikTk, which was in its infancy four years ago, on other social media platforms. The QAnon conspiracy organization also promotes PizzaGate at Facebok’s own organizational station and creates easy-to-calculate memes.
Driven through these new elements, the theory has been transformed. PizzaGate no longer focuses on Ms. Clinton and has taken fewer political leanings. Their new goals and patients are a wider diversity of challenging entrepreneurs, politicians and celebrities, adding Bieber, Bill Gates, Ellen DeGeneres, Oprah Winfrey and Chrissy Teigen, who are grouped together in the world elite. For group game stations like QAnon, PizzaGate has become a convenient way to foster discontent.
The theory also has global. While he had discovered that the best friend of traction in the United States, videos and articles about him have amassed millions of perspectives in Italy, Brazil and Turkey.
“PizzaGate has never upset the lok as it encompasses very challenging forces,” adding child advocacy and elite power, said Alice Marwick, a data expert at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “But now the scaffolding of other Americans who have researched has not been difficult for others to draw inspiration from it.”
Advertising