Frequently asked questions
Short answers, sourced from the bibliography and from this site's figures. Each figure links to its citable entry.
What is QAnon?
A conspiracy theory born in October 2017 on the anonymous board 4chan. An author signing "Q", presented as a U.S. government insider, announced that a "cabal" of paedophile elites would be brought down by Donald Trump in a "storm". None of this is true. The narrative pulls together older theories, including "Pizzagate" (Tuters et al., 2018; Barkun, 2013), and spread from platform to platform until it became a political movement (de Zeeuw et al., 2020; Rothschild, 2021; Sommer, 2023).
What is a "drop", and how many are there?
A post published by Q. The corpus contains 4,966 "Q" drops, posted between Oct 28, 2017 and Nov 27, 2022. Q posted at least one drop on 533 days, over a 1,857-day period. There is no official corpus, and collections differ at the margins (Papasavva et al., 2022). This site uses the JSON-QAnon corpus (Kingsman, 2021) (Data).
Who is "Q"?
Nobody knows for certain. Stylometric studies conclude there were at least two successive writers and put forward names, which those concerned deny. Their authors present them as hypotheses (Cafiero & Camps, 2023; OrphAnalytics, 2022; Kirkpatrick, 2022; Storchan, 2022). The sharpest stylistic break in the corpus falls around Nov 25, 2017, when Q moved to 8chan. This site cannot tell a change of author from a change of platform and identifies no one (Discourse).
Where and how often did Q post?
On 4chan, then 8chan and, after the latter closed in 2019, 8kun. Q posts in bursts (burstiness B = 0.91). 26% of drops follow the previous one within 5 minutes, 75% within an hour. The record is 64 drops in a single day, on Mar 28, 2019. Q's longest silence lasted 563 days, from Dec 8, 2020 to Jun 24, 2022. (Activity, Statistics)
Did Q's predictions come true?
Rarely. 13% of drops (598) contain at least one prediction, i.e. 846 predictions, 203 of them specific. Specific or dated predictions were checked one by one, with sources. 39 of the 140 checkable predictions came true, i.e. 28% (95% CI 21%–36%). Excluding already announced or scheduled events, the fulfilment rate drops to 16% (95% CI 10%–24%, 108 predictions). Of the 8 checkable arrests and indictments announced by Q, 0 came true. These repeated failures were not enough to dissolve the movement, a phenomenon long described for prophetic groups (Festinger et al., 1956; Westmark & McMahon, 2022) (Predictions).
Did Trump answer Q through his tweets?
Q claimed so (the "deltas"), but the figures do not show it. A Trump tweet follows a drop within 5 minutes in 4.2% of cases, against 4.0% expected by chance (local null model, p = 0.227), so no synchrony is demonstrated. The other way round, Q sometimes quoted Trump. 59 drops quote a Trump tweet, a median of 114 min after it was posted. (Q and Trump)
Whom and what did Q talk about?
The most cited actors are Donald Trump (386), Mainstream media (241), Barack Obama (166), by number of drops. 33% of drops name at least one actor from the dictionary. This choice is highly selective. Relative to world news (GDELT), the actors Q most over-represents are George Soros (×15.8), Hillary Clinton (×8.0), Democratic Party (×3.1). Q also linked to the press. Drops contain 2,618 links to 375 sites, and the most cited news outlet is foxnews.com (149 drops). (Actors, News, Statistics)
How many people believe in QAnon?
It depends on the question asked. In the United States, declared support for the movement stays around 5 to 8% (Enders et al., 2022; Uscinski & Enders, 2023), but agreement with its core statements reaches 14% of adults in 2021, 23% in 2023 and 19% in 2024 (PRRI, 2021; PRRI, 2023; PRRI Staff, 2024). In Germany, 12% of the population agrees at least in part with its narratives (Holnburger et al., 2022). This site does not measure support. Its Wikipedia data measure curiosity (Public interest).
Is QAnon dangerous?
As early as 2019 the FBI assessed that these theories motivated some extremists (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2019). About a hundred followers were charged with QAnon-motivated offences in the United States up to 2021, most of them over the Capitol attack (Jensen & Kane, 2021; Jensen & Kane, 2024). Researchers see a real threat but one unlike an organised terrorist group (Amarasingam & Argentino, 2020). The movement also weighs on followers' families (Moskalenko et al., 2023; Jordan & Whitmer, 2023).
Does QAnon exist in France?
Yes, especially since the 2020 pandemic, with French-language relays such as Les DéQodeurs and themes centred on health and vaccines (Macé & Plottu, 2021; Conspiracy Watch, s.d.; Leloup & Brandy, 2020). The government ordered an inquiry into new cult-like movements (Wheeldon, 2021; Conspiracy Watch, 2021), and the Conseil national du numérique analysed the risks for elections (Harfoush, 2021). Among the general public the movement seems little known, according to a small qualitative study (Aubry, 2024). See also State of research.
Does QAnon still exist?
Q fell silent after 8 December 2020, then posted a handful of messages in 2022 (Anti-Defamation League, 2022). After the 2020-2021 bans the movement fragmented onto smaller platforms (Holt & Rizzuto, 2021; Audureau, 2022), but its themes became mainstream on the American right, and the share of the population agreeing with its statements remains, in 2024, above its 2021 level (19% against 14%), after a peak of 23% in 2023 (PRRI, 2023; PRRI Staff, 2024; Peterka-Benton et al., 2025) (Timeline).
Are this site's figures reliable?
They are reproducible, since code, derived data and methodological choices are published (Method, Data). Their limits are known: non-canonical corpus, automatic annotation of predictions measured on a reference set, editorial verification of predictions, correlations that do not prove causation. The model chosen to annotate the corpus is gpt-5.6-luna (F1 = 0.86 on the reference set, corpus cost ≈ $0.59). Every page states its caveats.
Why study and quote the posts of a conspiracy theory?
To measure what the movement actually said and announced, against what happened. Posts are quoted as objects of study, never as facts, and accusations against private individuals are not reproduced. The ethical questions of this kind of research are discussed by (Cera, 2023).
Can I reuse the data and cite this site?
Yes. Texts and data are under the CC BY 4.0 licence (crediting the author and the source), the code under the MIT licence. Data are downloadable (Data), every result has its own citation (Key figures) and the Cite page gives the site's reference and BibTeX.