Daily Archives: December 9, 2021

The excitement building for And Just Like That (HBO, December 9), the new chapter of Sex and the City, is palpable; its announcement during the pandemic was almost therapeutic. "I do think it is a thing that people return to, particularly in a time of crisis," says Cynthia Nixon, back as Miranda Hobbes. There are a few notable changes from the original. First is the absence of Kim Cattrall's Samantha Jones. "I can't speak for the other women. I hear people chattering about it. I will only speak for myself, it's not something I think about," partly because the new series has an "embarrassment of riches of these new characters." Another absence is Miranda's signature red hair. After a conversation about a hair mishap plot point, Nixon recalled telling writer/director Michael Patrick King, "She's 55. She's not going to screw up her hair...and he was like, 'Ahhh, Miranda doesn't give a f**k.'" In the end, fans will be comforted by the return of familiar characters. "Hopefully it's like rejoining friends that you haven't seen in a long time, but you can pick up right where you left off."

Did you ever think a project like this would come along?

Never. But I'm the person who hasn't seen this at any step. I never expected I would get cast, I never expected it would really be a hit, much less the hit that it is, I never expected that we would make a film, then make another film, or that we would come back now. I don't know where Sarah Jessica would place herself on this trajectory, but I think, in my mind anyway, Kristin Davis is the person who has always believed. People would ask me, and I'd be like, "I don't think so. Maybe 1 percent chance. I don't see it." [laughs]

Without giving anything away, what's something unexpected fans can expect from And Just Like That?

One of the things that I love about our show, and when I say our show I mean our old show and our new show, is that our writers, and Michael Patrick King, in particular, held the writer's room to a very high standard. Any great show that's beloved and has been on for a lot of seasons, they start to repeat themselves. You can't blame them, particularly when it's a network show and you do a million episodes. But I have to say, I feel like we almost never repeated ourselves. They had this rule in the writer's room that if a plotline happened, it had to have happened directly to one of the writers or someone that the writer knew personally. So even though bizarre, outlandish things happened on the show, bizarre, outlandish things happen in life, and they always had their roots in this real thing that happened. So part of us not repeating ourselves was that we wouldn't go back to the same tropes of the characters again and again. We would actually allow the characters to grow and change and mature and in this one particularly, age. It's kind of an evasive answer, but I guess there are not a lot of shows about people, much less women, in their mid-50s. Hopefully, you love the characters and so it's like rejoining friends that you haven't seen in a long time but you can pick up right where you left off. Things have happened, wonderful things and terrible things. I don't know what the title means, it's very open to interpretation, but I think it does mean that suddenly something happens and everything is different.

When the project was announced at the height of the pandemic, it felt almost therapeutic.

Totally. This is something that people have always said to me. It's interesting because it's such an intricate show in a funny way. I think it's one of the reasons that it bears people watching it again and again. It's very dense. There's always something you didn't catch the first time and it's so economical the way they have these four characters, and you have to jam pack four storylines into 26 minutes. But yeah, I do think it is a thing that people return to, and people particularly return to in a time of crisis.

Each of the characters is so perfectly defined, but there's something about Miranda that has always been the voice of the zeitgeist. Why do you think that is?

It's really interesting because there was this Miranda Renaissance, right? These amazing women who have the Instagram (@everyoutfitonsatc), they're scholars of the show. They came out with the book We Should All Be Mirandas. Then a whole series of bags, when I ran for governor [of New York in 2018], we teamed up with them. "I'm a Miranda" and I'm Voting for Cynthia," that kind of thing. But there was stuff that Miranda kept trying to trumpet to the other characters, about ourselves, our obsession with men, not being honest with ourselves, that guy you're dating, he's not good for you...She was such a truth-teller. And she's was ahead of the curve in terms of so many things that we now just accept. I think we've all moved in the Miranda direction, in terms of our view of the world and particularly our view of women and the challenges that we face.

OK, there's one question that is on the mind of every fan, and it's probably not the one you're thinking: what happened to the red hair?

It's really funny. I was having a conversation with Michael Patrick King, and we were working out things that would happen in the new show. He had Miranda embarking on something new and she was a little nervous about it. He was thinking of this plotline about how her regular colorist wasn't there and she went to this new colorist, and they mess up her hair and it looked like Bozo. I was like, I'm just not feeling it. She's 55. She knows what colors to get. She's not going to screw up her hair. Also, we've done the Miranda with terrible hair from the '80s and stuff. I'm not interested in her being 55 and looking like a clown. It's really interesting because this is the brilliance of Michael Patrick King. What he heard me saying was "I'm not interested in Miranda and her red hair anymore," and he was like, "Ahhh, Miranda doesn't give a f**k." I think that's something that's happened to a lot of women, especially during the pandemic, when they couldn't get to a colorist, and they didn't want to try and do it. They looked at what they looked like and they actually liked it. It's a thing we do talk about in a bunch of different episodes, what relation do you have to aging and to your face having wrinkles and to your hair being gray.

You must get asked a lot about Samantha's absence, previously played by Kim Cattrall?

No one is asking us. I mean, no one's asked me, I can't speak for the other women. I hear people chattering about it. I will only speak for myself, it's not something I think about because I feel like, first there's the three of us, and then there are the other characters, the husbands and the friends and the kids and all that stuff. We have this embarrassment of riches of these new characters. Sara Ramirez and Karen Pittman and Nicole Ari Parker and Sarita Choudhury! Yeah, honestly, I never think of it.

How has your style been influenced by Miranda, and how do you think she's evolved over the years?

I had a mother who really loved clothes. A lot of time in my childhood was spent in dressing rooms with my mother trying things on, and my mother saying to me breathlessly, "Do you love it? I can't afford it, but is it amazing?" And I would be like, "It's nice mom." When I met Patricia Field (the costume designer on Sex and the City), when we did the pilot, I was like, 31 maybe? I had been acting for almost 20 years at that point, but I had never had a role that was actually kind of focused on my body, not just in sex scenes and nudity, but the clothes and walking around. The main thing that Pat taught me was that you want to wear the clothes, you don't want the clothes to wear you. You don't want to be a hanger for the clothes and you don't want to kowtow to the orthodoxy of the very high-end designer that has designed this beautiful thing. You want to mix and match and you want to do high and low, which I think our show does in a number of ways. We do high and low with food, we do high and low with plot, we do high and low with locations. That's really the essence of it. Certainly having access to all this amazing designer clothing, but then also great vintage pieces. I never really wore high heels much before. I guess don't be intimidated by the clothes, the clothes are there for you. For me, whose belly has never been flat even before I had children, God bless the high waist. Point me to the high-waisted pants.

Broadway has reopened, which is so exciting! You're an icon of the stage. What was first show you saw after the reopening?

Two things. One is I go to the theater a fair amount. When the shows were closing in mid-March, I think it was maybe March 11, I woke up and I was like, "You know what, I'm going to go see the show that I most want to see. Because there's no time for messing around." I got tickets that night for Company, and it was one of the greatest things I've ever seen. Then the next day Broadway was shut down. So the amazingness and execution of that show nurtured me for a long time, but I really missed going to the theater. It was interesting to me because I'm a pretty informal person, but what I found is that I missed the ceremony. I didn't miss myself personally having to dress up but I missed being able to go to the theater as a form of church. Not just for being moved or entertained, but actually being with people in a collective experience. So I really missed it. The first show I went to see this summer was Merry Wives of Windsor in Central Park. We took our son and that was a delightful adventure. Then I've seen two shows already, one was my friend Douglas Carter Beane's totally charming, delightful Off-Broadway show Fairycakes. Fantastic! I also went to see a Caroline or Change. [Sharon D Clarke] was amazing. And I don't mind sitting in the audience in a mask. I don't know why I don't mind it, but I don't really mind it.

Do you have plans to come back to Broadway anytime soon?

I was supposed to be directing a play on Broadway. It's a really interesting play that was having its 40th anniversary in 2020 and we were going to do it in the fall of 2020. It's called Last Summer at Bluefish Cove, which is the first positive theatrical depiction of lesbians. It's about a group of friends in a beach community over one summer. So that was my next Broadway play, but I don't have any plans to come to Broadway in the near future. We're still talking about what are we going to do and how are we going to get that one together again. There is a play that I've signed on to that I'm very anxious to do by a great playwright named Jordan Seavey called The Seven Year Disappear. So maybe we'll workshop that a little in January.

New York is changing politically, and you've been a voice in that change. What sort of positive changes do you see happening and would you ever consider running for office again?

I don't think that I would ever run again. One of the reasons I ran is that no one else would because no one else felt they could run. Andrew Cuomo was such a terrifying and vindictive and looming figure that anybody who was actually in politics as their bread and butter could not oppose him or their career would be over the moment they announced. Luckily, he is gone and other people will run and are running. So I don't have to. But one of the reasons I ran was to show what New York State could be like. And I think that as Democratsand New York State is a two-to-one Democratic stateit's a very blue state and very progressive, very wealthy place, so we should be able to do a lot. We've got a lot of debate and a lot of infighting going on in the Democratic Party right now. I think there is a sense, from the electorate, like, "Oh the person in charge is a Democrat, I don't have to worry, I'm sure they're doing the right thing." And it's just not always the case. People who are really firmly entrenched in the establishment, there's not so much difference between who's a Democrat and who's a Republican. It's like, who are the people that are in power that want to stay in power, and that's their main concern rather than actually achieving any change or serving the people that they're supposed to serve and making those people's lives better. What I feel is, more and more people are being elected, they're younger, they're more diverse, they're more ethnically diverse, they're more economically diverse, they're more sexual-identity diverse, gender-identity diverse, and they are really part of a movement. I feel like there are more and more different kinds of people who are challenging entrenched elected leaders. And when we talk as progressives, when we talk about the change we want to bring, we have to fight against the socialist label, take the vilifying off and you just look at what we're talking about. People are like, I can have universal health care. I can have this Green New Deal because it would not only save the planet, but it's actually a tremendous jobs program and an economic engine. Where can I sign up for that? It's like, you can sign up for that. By voting.

Go here to read the rest:

Cynthia Nixon on the Changes in the 'Sex and the City' Revival, 'And Just Like That' - Newsweek

Fandom has become huge in recent years. Once an unfamiliar word, fandoma term that refers to a community of fansentered the mainstream vernacular about a decade or so ago. While the history of fandom is a long one, with some claiming its origins began with Arthur Conan Doyles famous detective Sherlock Holmes, the internet has only amplified fandoms reach. Its especially popular on social media sites where fans interact with one another, share information, participate in cosplay, create fan fiction and fan art, and more.

There are few limits to what fandom encompasses. While traditionally, a fandom emerged around entertainment media such as books, television shows or films, nowadays, fandoms can form around anything from tech companies like Tesla and Apple to sports teams and celebrities. Taylor Swift fans, for example, refer to themselves as Swifties and Beyoncs fans call themselves the Beyhive.

At first glance, fandom and philanthropy appear to have little in common. One funder, however, is looking to harness the power of fandom to inspire social change. Its goal is simple: to make good famous.

Most people in the mainstream can only name a Malala [Yousafzai], a Greta [Thunberg]and why? Because theyre huge on social media, and if not social media, theyre just huge in media in general. Theyre very visible, said Elevate Prizes executive director Carolina Garcia-Jayaram.

Its not because their cause is more important than another cause, she said, but theyve been able to garner that kind of attention over a period of time, not just a one-off story. So building that capability within the person and the organization so that its sustainable is really important.

The Elevate Prize Foundation was founded in 2019 by business leader, author and philanthropist Joseph Deitch. The vision? Building the first-ever fanbase for good to shine a light on social leaders and issues around the world that deserve more recognition. Elevate Prize hopes that this will inspire others to do good themselves. Deitch is founder and chairman of Commonwealth Financial Network, a Massachusetts-based financial services firm. He also won a Tony Award as co-producer of The Gershwins Porgy and Bess in 2012 and authored a book titled Elevate: An Essential Guide to Life. Aside from the Elevate Prize, Deitch participates in giving through Commonwealth Cares, a nonprofit associated with his firm.

So what does the Elevate Prize involve? The goal is to provide activists and social entrepreneurs with resources that raise the visibility of their work, helping them to better mobilize support for their causes. Winners receive approximately $300,000 in unrestricted funding. The prize also includes two years of resources, including professional and leadership development, mentorship, social media training and the means to expand platforms to reach a wider audience.

Last month, the foundation announced the 10 winners of its second annual prize. They include Amanda Alexander from the Detroit Justice Center, which works alongside communities to transform the justice system and promote equitable and fair cities; Tony Weaver from Weird Enough Productions, which runs a national education program that combines inclusive comic books with an anti-racist and equity-based learning curricula; and Krista Donaldson from Equalize Health, which provides access to medical care and addresses the leading causes of maternal and newborn mortality through innovative tech.

Winners were chosen from a pool of over 1,200 applicants for their innovative approaches to global causes, such as LBGTQIA+ rights, access to healthcare, social justice reform and sustainability.

The Elevate Prize is funded by Deitch himself. The foundation has also partnered with MIT Solvea social entrepreneurship initiative based at the research universityto build the infrastructure of the prize, including outreach, the application and selection processes, and vetting. The foundation does not receive any funding for the prize from MIT Solve.

The panel of judges for this years prize included Diane von Fustenberg, Maria Elena Salinas and Natalie Tran.

A unique approach to fostering change

So why fandoms? For starters, fandoms typically inspire enormous enthusiasm and participation. The Elevate Prize Foundation in turn asked a simple question: What if we harness that enthusiasm and community for change?

We recognize that there were these organized fan bases around the world, whether you were a fan of the NBA or a fan of the Kardashians, said Garcia-Jayaram. These fandoms, she added, were only getting bigger and stronger.

At the same time, many of the major social movements were really beginning and taking shape on social media, whether it was Black Lives Matter or the response to COVID or #MeToo, said Garcia-Jayaram.

Fandoms have already proven capable of doing big things. As Inside Philanthropy has written before, the popular South Korean pop (K-pop) group BTS donated $1 million to Black Lives Matter, which in turn led to their fans to raise more than $1.3 million to match BTSs contribution. Additionally, last year, K-pop fans and TikTok users reserved tickets to a Donald Trump rally but did not attend the event, cutting into its overall attendance.

Businesses and marketers have learned to tap into that enthusiasm to help sell their products, whether thats teasing an upcoming slate of movies at Comic Con or introducing a new iPhone at an Apple event. For better or worse, this is part of the zeitgeist of online life.

For the Elevate Prize Foundation, this convergence of fanbase and social media movement building represents a new opportunity and space for philanthropy, one that not many foundations have taken note of.

As Garcia-Jayaram pointed out, most social leaders and nonprofit organizations have little to no visibility in social media. As such, the training and professional development that Elevate Prize winners receive is invaluable to their success.

Although some elements of this training are more traditional, such as board building and enterprise developments, perhaps more importantly, winners receive other perks to which smaller nonprofits are usually not privy.

Winners go through an intense six-month social media bootcamp with a Los Angeles agency called Shareability. They also receive a complete brand audit and are exposed to Fresh Speakers to help them sell and pitch their work.

So all of these steps that we take [them] through, prepare them and help them build their presence in the public realm so they can build their audience, said Garcia-Jayaram. If theyre looking to enact policy change, if theyre looking to just bring more attention to their sector and their cause, thats where we feel we can really make a difference, so thats how the program is designed.

Winning organizations have progressed beyond the idea stage, and can demonstrate a proven model, a proven leader and a position of growth. Typically, prize winners have already received support from major institutions and foundations. Where Elevate Prize wants to make a difference is in helping winners garner more support so they can scale up.

As with fandom in general, Elevate Prize recognizes the importance of the storytelling aspect of the work. Thats what gets people to really care, said Garcia-Jayaram. This is a content-driven world, and so [we want to be] able to give our winners the tools that allows them to connect to the world through the channels that are everywhere today, whether its social media or streaming services or whatever the case.

We see the foundation at the intersection of entertainment, culture and philanthropy, she said. So one of my main goals and the goal of the foundation is to open up philanthropy to the world a bit, you know, make it more accessible to people, break down the barriers a bit.

A campaign against hatred

One of last years winners, Amanda Nguyen, offers a prime example of just how much of a difference the Elevate Prize can make. Nguyen is the founder and CEO of Rise, a civil rights accelerator dedicated to advancing the rights of sexual violence survivors throughout the world. According to Nguyen, Rise trains organizers, activists and everyday people how to navigate our democracy, specifically by penning their own civil rights into existence.

One of Rises major goals is for all 50 states to pass their Sexual Assault Survivors Bill of Rights, which include the right to informative rape kit procedures and notification, the right to survivors advocacy, and the right to terminate all legal ties with the assailant.

To be clear, Nguyen and Rise were already successful before the Elevate Prize. Nguyen has made the Forbes 30 under 30 list, she was nominated for the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize, and she was appointed by President Barack Obama to the U.S. Department of State as deputy White House liaison.

The prize is meant to help an organization scale up and increase its visibility, said Garcia-Jayaram. Such was the case with Nguyen.

According to Nguyen, the Elevate Prize believed in Rises model of creating change. So often, foundations in philanthropy are risk-averse and thats why well see this enormous economic stratification within who gets allocated money within the philanthropy world, she said. But what Elevate Prize does is, it helps bridge that gap by resourcing, by funding changemakers who are on the ground, who have lived experiences, and who are creating innovative models for changemaking.

Undoubtedly, we would not be where we are without the support of the Elevate Prize, said Nguyen.

Thanks to the Elevate Prize, Rise was able to train more organizers. Rise also played a crucial role in creating the enormously successful Stop Asian Hate campaign.

February of this year, I turned on my camera and I asked people to stop Asian hate, and specifically, the call to action was to get the stories of violence toward the AAPI community into the mainstream media, said Nguyen. The video went viral, racking up more than 11 million views on TikTok.

It was because of Elevate Prizes resources that we were able to set up a rapid-response infrastructure and create out of these Stop Asian Hate viral videos a movement that focused on addressing the roots of systemic racism towards the AAPI community, said Nguyen.

Elevate Prize was able to provide funding and direct resources to bring trusted AAPI voices into the fold and to organize communities. It also helped amplify the work that Nguyen had been doing.

Im so deeply grateful to Elevate for believing in this vision, and a future for Rise looks like a world where people speak with empathy, that they learn and are educated about AAPI history and that everyday citizens have the ability to feel like America is a country of the people, by the people and for the people, added Nguyen.

A different kind of fandom

In the end, its doubtful that many social movement leaders will be able to inspire the kind of fervor that fandom does. There likely wont be people cosplaying as social change leaders anytime soon. And I dont think well see much in the way of nonprofit-themed fan fiction (though heres to hoping).

However, this convergence of fandom and social change draws attention not only to some of societys biggest problems, but to those who are working to find the solutions.

As the Stop Asian Hate campaign showed, the internet, and social media in particular, is a powerful tool to effect change. In its first 18 months, the Elevate Prize Foundation has reached more than 16 million people and has an engagement rate of over 16%. On average, engagement rates vary depending on the social network. For Facebook, a good engagement rate is about 2%. For Twitter, its between 0.02% and 0.09%. For Instagram, a good rate is between 1% and 5%.

The Elevate Prize Foundation also has a number of other programs. They include sponsoring MIT Solves Antiracist Technology in the U.S. Challengeaccording to the foundation, a spot in the challenge is reserved for one of the Elevate Prize recipients. This years chosen recipient was Tony Weaver. The inaugural Elevate Prize Catalyst Award went to Trevor Noah of The Daily Show for using his platform to spread awareness, inspire change and mobilize others around some of the biggest issues of today.

Like it or not, thats the way the world is working right now, said Garcia-Jayaram. If you can get the eyeballs on what youre doing through the media, through entertainment, youre much more likely to have sustainability and be able to build much more quickly support for your cause.

Read this article:

With the Elevate Prize, a Foundation Looks to Harness the Power of Fandom for Good Inside Philanthropy - Inside Philanthropy

Will Donald Trump try to steal the next US election? Is there a cabal of Satan worshipping paedophiles hell bent on destroying society and mass abusing children? What the hell is QAnon?

These are just a few of the hard-to-believe questions I was asking myself earlier this year as I entered the upper echelons of conspiracy politics for a documentary I was making and it was a world I was quite unprepared for.

I wanted to find out what happens when the line between truth and lies is so distorted that no one knows what is real anymore When the voting public no longer care about what is real, but only what side of the aisle theyre on?

Quite a lot, it turns out, and we should be bracing ourselves for more.

In the last year misinformation and alternate truths have ushered in a new era of riots, violence and murders. Its also changing our politics forever.

The dizzying world of conspiracy isnt a new concept though many of the theories of QAnon are revisions of old anti-Semitic tropes.

Its a community that has taken the conspiratorial mantle from the likes of InfoWars radio host Alex Jones, 80s TV presenter-turned-conspiracist David Icke and others, to become THE preeminent conspiratorial factory. The conspiracy of everything.

Its been an amorphous blob that soaks up any and every conspiracy in a mass scale connecting-of-the-dots. You want to talk about how vaccines are actually weapons of Bill Gates? Youre welcome in the world of Q. How about 9/11? Hop aboard. Are you obsessed with elite peadophiles? Well, QAnon is the community for you.

However, thanks to years of Donald Trump in the White House and unmitigated use of social media, combined with an unprecedented pandemic, the world of conspiracy isnt just hidden away in the corner of the internet any more its filtered into the mainstream.

You might have seen the word QAnon while scrolling through social media, or maybe youve spotted the image of a furry horned man breaking into the Capitol building in Washington DC on January 6th 2021?

Perhaps its something you may have at first found amusing, then shocking, then no longer paid much attention.

But it should have your attention. While Donald Trump may call QAnon adherents, People who love our country, the FBI prefers to call them a domestic terror threat.

Amanda Quimper, from Elyria, Ohio, is one of Qs most ardent digital soldiers and someone I met while making my documentary, The Cult of Conspiracy: QAnon. She is also testament to how complicated the world of Q and conspiracy can be.

Despite believing in horrific conspiracies involving satanic peadophiles, shes also an incredibly kind soul who practices spirituality and believes she is in conversation with God. Her mission is to help people, and to save the children. She dabbled with drugs in her earlier years, she lost friends to a heroin epidemic in her area and now finds herself working in a strip club.

Q, Amanda says, was her saving grace, something she knew that others didnt it also gave her a community with a shared goal.

But at the same time, as she fell further down the rabbit hole, she also fell further from her family. She started spouting off wilder and wilder conspiracies.

For Amanda, this was the most important thing anyone could ever talk about. The world needed to be saved from evil. But to her family, she needed help. And their relationship fractured.

I heard this story time and time again. The story of mothers who had lost children, families who had fallen apart, people who had suffered a catastrophic event that caused them to question everything. In the vulnerability of this carnage, they found Q. But as they became obsessed with their new research, they slowly started to lose everything else.

Some, like Neely Petrie-Blanchard, whos family I filmed with, are even accused of killing in QAnons name. Its alleged she killed a man after falling down the Q rabbit hole. She now sits in a Floridian prison, believing Q and Donald Trump will soon save her.

These individuals had often found their way to Q after falling on a conspiratorial influencer that showed them the light. Sometimes they had risen to the role of community leader themselves, becoming increasingly responsible for a gaggle of conspiracy theorists who hung on their every word.

To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a webbrowser thatsupports HTML5video

I was particularly interested in these leaders and my mission was to embed myself with the figures attempting to usher in a new age of conspiratorial politics.

I wanted to understand where this would all end up. So I did what every ardent Q follower does, I went on the forums and went to the public events.

Although QAnon stopped posting forever on December 8 2020 after Trump lost the election, that didnt mean its followers had stopped meeting up.

Across the US there were QAnon-related events from Anaheim, California, to Tampa, Florida, to Dallas, Texas. Thousands upon thousands of people turned up, with tickets costing up to $1000 dollars a piece. It was a real whos who in the world of conspiracy, and this is how I made my way up the conspiracy tree.

I found myself spending time with some of Qs earliest adopters, talking about Michelle Obamas non-existent penis and Obamas secret homosexual tendancies.

I also found myself parlaying with some of the biggest names in US Republican politics: Michael Flynn, Donald Trumps former National Security advisor, Roger Stone, a King Maker of US politics who helped get Nixon and Trump elected, and Mike Lindell, a key ally of Trump and the main proponent of the Big Lie the conspiracy that the 2020 US election was stolen from Donald Trump.

Glimpsing behind the veil was fascinating. In shabby back offices and hallway corners, they gave me minutes of their time. Surrounded by adoring fans and staff, they were intimidating and convincing. On stage they wore fine suits, frequently asked for donations from their supporters, and rallied the troops to fight back to save America. In my conversations they were more cautious, sensing I may not be on their side.

They were wary of mentioning Q directly and even went to so far as to deny any knowledge of the conspiracy groups existence but had one simple message: America is corrupt and they are going to take their country back. I was struck by their conviction. It wasnt hard to see why so many listened they were firm and decisive.

However, dont think that just because were across the Atlantic were immune to this. In an exclusive poll with YouGov for the documentary, we found 58% of Brits believe satanic ritual abuse of children probably happens in the UK.

We also discovered that 10% of Brits believe the government should be overthrown by force. Both of these beliefs have their links to the QAnon movement, and they both demonstrate just how deeply embedded conspiracy currently is in the national zeitgeist.

When I watched the Capitol Riots unfold on TV when thousands of Q supporters, buoyed on by claims of a rigged election and years of revolutionary conspiratorial chatter raided the home of congress in Washington I had originally hoped that the events would be some kind of turning point for the millions around the world hooked on the alternate truths.

That perhaps after seeing the chaos and destruction the conspiracy had helped to bring about, theyd wake up to the lies theyd been fed. But the exact opposite happened.

Despite endless failed Q predictions, despite this act of anti-democratic rioting and despite the hours of video definitively showing Q supporters at the Capitol on January 6, nothing could free followers from the Kool-Aid that was now running through their veins.

It became once again, another conspiracy. Another secretive move by the Cabal to harm the movement. And it pushed them all deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole.

While mainstream media organisations painted the picture of a rampant right-wing mob raiding the Capitol building in an effort to reinstate Donald Trump prominent right-wing commentators and Q influencers flipped the narrative entirely. January 6 was actually planned by Antifa and the FBI, they claimed. It was a false flag with crisis actors. A familiar and convenient story of deep state conspiracy once again hooked in the people it was meant to.

But how did it all come to this? The origins of QAnon is a uniquely modern concept. Its a movement that started on the fringes of the internet in October 2017 on 4chan an infamously toxic message board website where users post anonymously. Despite these offbeat beginnings though, it has become entirely mainstream even making it to the office of the President of the United States.

Through thousands of cryptic social media posts from a mysterious figure called Q, the movement became a religion and the webpages of 4chan, and then 8chan, became the holy scripture.

The original idea was that there was a deep state secretly running the world and its politics. They were dirty, nefarious paedophiles and the likes of Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama were in on it. Trump, the conspiracy went, was the saviour. He had been selected by top military officials to bring about The Storm and The Great Awakening. The mysterious figure originally called, QClearancePatriot, was the Messiah spreading the message to its followers.

Over the years the movement gained traction and spread its tentacles throughout the online world, creeping ever increasingly into mainstream social media until the likes of your brothers, sisters, parents and uncles suddenly started talking about cabals and microchips. Families were destroyed, followers lost their jobs, people killed in the name of conspiracy convinced they were fighting an evil cabal.

But its rise continued and culminated in the biggest attack ever on US democracy last January.

By this point, I was well on the way to making a documentary and I was struck with a couple of burning questions, what happens next? And where does this all end? Despite Q no longer posting, it increasingly felt like the QAnon movement was now too big to fail.

New leaders and new influencers have filled the gaps left by Q. Empowered by the realisation that even though they are wrong almost every time, it just doesnt matter. As long as they speak with conviction, never apologise and always blame left-wing protest groups the conspiracy will continue.

These new leaders often shy away from using Qs name in their conspiracies but the roots of their misinformation are deeply embedded in the movement.

Now, the community has its sights on upcoming elections, the 2022 Midterms and the 2024 US Presidential Election at the top of them.

The next stage of Q and conspiracy was to take over politics from the ground up. Inspired by lies of a rigged election, fears that childrens blood was being harvested by elites in order to obtain a satanic psychadelic drug and rumours that communists were stealing their country Qs believers up and down the US were answering the call to fight back. They were joining each stage of the political process. From the very lowest levels of the school boards and community town halls, to the height of power: US congress.

Reporting by Media Matters suggests almost 50 US House and Senate candidates have embraced QAnon theories in their bids for election in 2022. And the unsettling thing is, theyre having success.

Two prominent conservative figures, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, have welcomed conspiracies around rigged elections and they are now serving congresswomen. Majorie Taylor Green has since attempted to distance herself from Q, but one thing all these candidates have in common is that the vast majority are Republicans, theyre deeply religious, and deeply conservative.

The other thing they have in common is their propensity towards alternative facts.

That was the pseudo reality Ive spent the last year trying to wrap my head around. But Ive come to the conclusion its not possible to understand it in any traditional sense. Instead, one can only attempt to understand the psychology of peoples journey down the rabbit hole.

For some, those die hard believers who would give up everything in the name of Q, its often a journey spurred on by trauma.

My interviews often ended dramatically, with accusations I was asking stupid questions and that I was destroying America.

There were often staunch denials of any knowledge of QAnon. But Qs conspiracies were absolutely everywhere and permeated the room like a bad stench.

Both Flynn and Lindell are committed to the idea that the 2020 US election was rigged, and they regularly urge their supporters to fight to take their country back.

In the moments after difficult interviews, I would ponder the question: do they really believe this? I would wonder whether it was all just a ploy to appeal to a base created by Donald Trump, an anticipation of a Trump second term, and an attempt to curry favour with the most controversial man in US politics.

I eventually concluded though, that the question didnt matter. The impact was the same, whether the leaders believed it or not.

And as Trump likely prepares for a run for office in 2024, riding on the back of a conspiracy threatening the whole of the US democratic system, I sit cautiously waiting for the ripples into UK politics. And I have only one piece of advice: dont believe everything you read on the internet.

The Cult of Conspiracy: QAnon airs on Channel 4 at 9pm,December 7, 2021

MORE : QAnon Shaman sentenced to 41 months for Capitol riot role, avoids harsher penalty

MORE : QAnon believers wait for dead JFK Jr to announce Donald Trump 2024 presidential run

MORE : 5G, child trafficking and Covid-19 cover ups how does someone end up a conspiracy theorist?

Do you have a story youd like to share? Get in touch by emailing Claie.Wilson@metro.co.uk

Share your views in the comments below.

The rest is here:

Beware the rabbit hole: How conspiracy is taking control of politics - Metro.co.uk

There was blood on the floor across U.S. stocks on Friday, but for meme stocks only a frantic last hour of buying prevented social medias favorite ticker symbols from getting exsanguinated to end the first trading week of December.

Both GameStop GME and AMC Entertainment AMC among other key meme names spent most of Fridays trading hours getting outright clobbered with GameStop falling as much as 11.8% and AMC plummeting 15.2% going into the final hour of trading.

For memes, it looked like the close to a particularly difficult week as confusion over how concerned markets should be about the omicron variant mixed with the very real fear that Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell is getting ready to start tapering, ending an unprecedented period of central banking accommodation of capital markets.

AMC, more exposed to the concerns over a new COVID variant, felt the pain more acutely than its ur-meme partner, falling back almost 33% by 3 p.m. Friday. GameStop bottomed out at the same time but at a comparatively shallower 21.4%.

Generally, signs were popping up everywhere that the salad days of buying stocks for the sake of future growth might be coming to an end.

That pain was felt across meme names like Koss KOSS, Tesla TSLA and Nvidia NVDA as the Nasdaq COMP was openly flirting with a bear market, and even zeitgeist investor Cathie Wood found herself getting mauled by that waking bear as her flagship ARK Innovation ETF ARKK dropped another 13.8% on the week.

For AMC, the two-week wait is on for the newest Spider-Man film, which AMC CEO/memelord Adam Aron is using to gauge Reddit Ape interest in nonfungible tokens and other cryptos. But for now, Aron has been reduced to trying to juice up retail fervor by taking to Twitter and inviting his followers to Aaron Sorkins new movie about Lucille Balls difficult marriage to Desi Arnaz.

Really.

Spider-Man cannot swing fast enough.

For GameStop, some of the week was taken up by some hot drama around retail investors seeing some incorrect data about the stock on Fidelitys platform Tuesday morning.

That data appeared to show that there were more than 13 million shares of GameStop available to short when in reality there were only about 2 million, a number that GameStops Ape army knew was wrong thanks to their obsessive watching of short interest on the stock.

After Fidelity released a statement claiming the root cause was an incorrect entry of the number of shares available to short by one of our external counterparties. The issue was fixed by 12:10 p.m. ET today.

Reddit and Twitter were ablaze with conjecture over who could have been at fault for the discrepancy with many once again pointing the finger at short sellers that they see as their archenemies, with one theory alleging that a defunct market maker was to blame.

But in the end, the answer was a very boring one. On Wednesday evening, a spokesperson for Vanguard sent a statement to MarketWatch admitting that the house that Jack Bogle built was in fact the counterparty that made the error on GameStop data.

Due to a clerical data entry error, yesterday we provided Fidelity with the incorrect potential securities lending availability data for Gamestop (GME), read Vanguards statement. The error was corrected shortly thereafter and before the markets opened. We regret this error occurred and apologize for any confusion this may have caused.

According to insiders, the timing issue was a result of Fidelity taking its data feed from Vanguard and then updating later in the day. That time lapse accounted for Vanguards corrected data not hitting Fidelitys trading tickets until just after noon EST.

And, like it or not, errors like this are not uncommon.

Brokers receive incorrect data that gets displayed to the public all the time, explained Anthony Denier, CEO of trading platform Webull Financial. Once brokers are made aware or catch the error themselves, they rectify it as soon as possible, but because this error happened regarding short interest on GME its now a conspiracy against the Apes.

But because of the scrutiny that eagle-eyed Apes are putting on meme stocks, even Denier sees a shift happening.

This is the new world, but I will tell you this, the retail army has put everyone on notice to be better, he said.

The retail army has also made it difficult for old school traders to get comfortable with any trend.

Another clear indicator of how retail Apes play by their own rules was the fact that between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. EST Friday, GameStop soared 7.6% and AMC popped almost 13% in that time frame as social media was rife with users encouraging one another to BTFD, or buy the f@*$ing dip.

The major indexes also pared back losses in the final hour of the trading day, but GameStop and AMC have both managed to go on dramatic run-ups in the last hour of trading every day this week.

Some die-hard Apes will continue to believe that theres more to bad data than simple errors by some of the most trusted and drama-free investment advisers around and that no one is selling in a massive selloff because everyones hands are as diamond as their own, but some might also be coming around to the notion that they started a movement in January and there are people on the fringes who see that movement as. a tradeable trend, and they arent as zealousand they have much softer hands.

And were not talking about hedge fundsnecessarily.

Now, what remains to be seen is if the dips created by those fringe players remain buyable as the world starts to shrug off COVID variants and gets back to normal as Jay Powell tightens the spigot and money gets a lot less cheap.

Diamond hands will start to feel heavy by then, but so will the cost of borrowing to short a videogame retailer stock that is up 900% in 2021.

And, oh, GameStop reports earnings on Dec. 8.

See the original post here:

Late surge in GameStop and AMC save meme stocks from a very bloody Friday - MarketWatch