>>510462739 (OP)Jim and Ron Watkins ended up with a pallet of weird old surplus government computers. They decided that they could sell them to gullible boomers by coming up with this LARP about there being patriotic high level insiders working to bring down the deep state, and that they would be sending out encrypted messages to patriots on the outside that could be decrypted with the old surplus computers.
They were able to use their super admin powers to edit and backdate posts on 8chud to make it seem like the Q posts were legitimately posting insider information before the public knew about it.
Eventually the Qanon stuff was driving so much traffic to the site that it became more profitable to just run with it instead of sticking to the secret decoder ring computer scam.
Gullible boomers who got sucked into the Q stuff thought everything else they saw on the chans was also 100% legit and thought all the trolling and shitposting was actual high level insiders leaking shit.
They would see a shitpost, believe it, repost on twitter about how they had some trusted high level insider tell them about Italian spy satellites or Delta force confiscating servers or space lasers or whatever. Other boomers would see the tweet, go to 4chan and see other shitposts on the same topic and then go on twitter and post about how they had independent confirmation of this. Then someone would do a twitter screenshot and post it on 4chan and create this feedback cycle of gullibility.