On Thomas Schoenberger: the Q Watcher's Lament

Julian Feeld, the *incomparable* editor of the QAA podcast, asked me to write up my views on the "is Thomas Schoenberger Q?" debate in a pastebin.

And what Julian wants, Julian gets!

My SENSE is that he wants something he can point at and say "this is how I feel," and for that, the TL;DR below should suffice. A more detailed account of how I ARRIVED at these conclusions is -- as is my custom -- appended; gaze into this abyss only if you're really, really bored. (Though some of the individual sections are shorter than the TL;DR, so hey, go for it if you wanna, I guess.)

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Here is a TL;DR for the sane and/or lazy among you (you may object that the TL;DR is itself TL;DR, to which I respond: hi, have we met? I don't do bite-sized):

If you're asking me to place my bets on either a clean, simple hypothesis of Q's origins which is abundantly supported by relevant, reliable evidence (Q was a 4chan LARP that hit the lottery, and came along when 4chan LARPs were already slowly spilling off of 4chan)

OR a complex, contingent hypothesis which is supported by a modest amount of evidence of varying degrees of relevance and reliability (an unknown funder paid a con man to make a bunch of failed predictions on 4chan because somehow that was a reasonable plan to increase support for President Trump, and also a variety of other shady characters were involved in this too),

I will go with the simple one.

But, while doing so, I acknowledge that I *can't exclude* the complex one, because there IS some evidence supporting that hypothesis and nothing conclusively disproves it.

However, I (and many other Q watchers) have been down the Schoenberger rabbit hole several times already. I have spent dozens of hours reading and discussing the material that the Schoenberger people offer as proof, and *nothing* I've encountered made me say, "This is so persuasive and well-documented that I will put my reputation on the line to endorse it." It may be that their claims are better-developed now than they were when I first encountered them, but researching them is an ENORMOUS time sink. This week alone, I have spent probably... 10 hours? More? on Schoenberger content -- which is a HUGE percentage of the time I have available for research.

At some point, I have to choose how to allocate my time -- and the same holds true for every Q watcher. I can't chase down these claims about Schoenberger AND do archival research AND write up my findings AND watch old Q video content AND be on Q Telegram AND have non-Q hobbies AND talk to journalists AND hold down a job AND stay in a relationship AND sleep. One or more of these must go.

To the Schoenberger people, it is EXTREMELY OBVIOUS that their claim is the single most important Q-related item on that list, and that I (and other Q watchers) should drop everything and focus on their story.

I decline to do so, and I think that's OK! In the essay below, which is largely a series of copy-pastes from Twitter because it's incredibly late and it's my fucking pastebin and you cannot stop me, I will lay out a more detailed case explaining how I evaluate evidence, how that applies to QAnon material in general and Schoenberger stuff in parti -- you know what? Just read the table of contents.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. WHO THE HELL IS THOMAS SCHOENBERGER?

2. WHY ARE WE DISCUSSING THIS DUDE?

3. HOW DO WE WEIGH EVIDENCE?

4. WHY HAS THE SCHOENBERGER STORY FAILED TO PERSUADE ME AND MANY OTHERS WHO ENCOUNTERED IT?

5. CONCLUSION


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WHO THE HELL IS THOMAS SCHOENBERGER?: A guide for the blessedly ignorant

Every account I have read of Schoenberger says that he is, and this is grossly underselling it, a VERY unsavory person -- the MOST charitable assessment of him I have read describes him as "mired in elaborate feuds that make little sense to anyone outside of them" (https://tinyurl.com/y5jzfuwd), which alone is a giant red flag. Other statements are far less restrained: they describe him as a stalker; a serial manipulator; a con man; much given to harassing and threatening his victims should they try to blow the whistle on him; and, in short, a vengeful little pustule of a human being.

He has, it appears, cut a wide swath of destruction through the lives of many people. Businesses and groups he's associated with tend to dissolve acrimoniously, and he's typically at the center of it.

For instance: he was part of the Cicada 3301 alternate reality game, and allegedly tried to sell TV and movie rights while cutting out most of the content creators. As you might imagine, the fallout from this tore Cicada apart.

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WHY ARE WE DISCUSSING THIS DUDE?

Some people think he is either the author of Q's earliest drops or, at the very least, was deeply involved in QAnon from the beginning. The earliest and most persistent disseminators of this theory claim they were involved in Cicada 3301 themselves; one, Manuel Chavez (alias Defango), is a notorious 4chan troll who VERY unwisely became Schoenberger's business partner for a time, and the other, Arturo Tafoyovsky, exudes *powerful* "I WILL HAVE MY REVENGE!" energy, though I have to say that -- if he succeeds at making Schoenberger's life more difficult -- it couldn't happen to a nicer person.

Debates over Schoenberger's involvement have been a hot topic in the Q-watcher community for several months now, and a recent Vice TV documentary on QAnon spent quite a bit of screen time on Schoenberger. As a result, at the tail end of January 2021, Schoenberger-related discussion has consumed (figures are approximate) 4,322% of all oxygen in the Q-watching community.

This is especially unfortunate because this is a critical period for QAnon -- the Great Pivot is still underway, and while Q followers seem, for NOW, to be merging with Sovereign Citizen ideology (which is EXTREMELY BAD NEWS) and to have accepted March 4th as the date that the TRUE President-in-waiting will be revealed (hint: his name rhymes with Grump), the pivot isn't yet complete. There's a LOT of work to be done gathering, analyzing, and disseminating information about what's happening in QAnon circles.

And we have only so many hours in the day in which to do it.

And yet here we are, discussing this incredibly toxic little skidmark 24/7/365 because this is the Discourse and no one can escape it.

NO ONE.

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INTERLUDE:

QUESTION: Holy hell, that's just the introduction?

ANSWER: Yes.

QUESTION: That's like four thousand pages long.

ANSWER: You are bad at counting. But also, welcome to my fucking life. It does get shorter from here on out, though! ... for a bit.

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HOW DO WE WEIGH EVIDENCE?

What I am looking for -- and I suspect what everyone else is looking for, but IDK if they'd describe it in these terms -- is evidence that is highly relevant *and* highly reliable.

I don't really have a formal procedure where I GRADE pieces of evidence on both points, but if I did, the evidence that would score highest is always going to be the canonical Q drops: they are 100% relevant to the QAnon movement and they are... not 100% reliable (in that they're missing, so far, 11 lost drops and also the information in them ISN'T TRUE, duh); but they are certainly a reliable record of *how Q operated*.

Just below that I would put responses from 4chan anons and from normies who were encountering Q elsewhere on the Internet. Why? Because we're capturing HIGHLY relevant information (how did people respond to Q?), and the sources (4plebs, archived Reddit threads, etc) are reliable -- we know these are real posts made by real people contemporaneously with the Q drops.

So with that very short (really just two-point!) checklist in mind, let's move on to...

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WHY HAS THE SCHOENBERGER STORY FAILED TO PERSUADE ME AND MANY OTHERS WHO ENCOUNTERED IT?

Because its proponents have, in general, tended to shove a confusing mass of documents (many of questionable provenance) at journalists and researchers while reciting details of events that we *do not know anything about.*

Here's a long interview with Arturo Tafoyovsky, the originator of the Thomas Schoenberger theory, conducted 5/24/19. He was excited because he'd just discovered, according to him, proof of his thesis.

The author of this blog post eventually comes around to seeing Tafoyovsky's evidence as compelling, so, to be very clear about this, I am NOT cherry-picking his WORST presentation: I am showing Tafoyovsky's his MOST successful presentation of his thesis. This is roughly the level Schoenberger proponents were operating at when I, and most other Q watchers, first encountered their claims.

https://therealsamizdat.com/2019/08/12/cicada-files-arturo-tafoyovsky-interviewed/


Take a look at how Arturo presents the claim: a jumbled mass of words involving Jerome Corsi and a video called "A858." The author of this blog post eventually comes around to seeing this evidence as compelling and exciting, but look what he has to slog through first:

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BELOW: A quote from the source (again: https://therealsamizdat.com/2019/08/12/cicada-files-arturo-tafoyovsky-interviewed/)

 Tafoyovsky: “Well, Jerome Corsi offered their patrons and his donators (BLOG AUTHOR'S NOTE: meaning people who donated to him, remember that English is not Arturo Tafoyovsky’s first language), he forwarded emails, he attached people on emails, that he would communicate with QAnon.”

Tafoyovsky continues: “Those emails got leaked. You can find it on Defango A858.”

I am silent, so Tafoyovsky continues: “There is a video, A858, on Defango, Corsi was communicating with an email with A858, a long number, an AOL email… he had the name of Jack, and he referred to himself as Q. You can see the video. I also put some evidence out on Twitter.” [04:17].

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Already, you can see why journalists would say: "Uh, sure, buddy." This simply is not an effective presentation of what will turn out to be an intricate, involved story.

Or consider this excerpt:

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Resuming our interview with Arturo Tafoyovsky:

Trujillo: “I looked at it, it did not make sense to me.” [01:01]

Tafoyovsky: “I recently baited Thomas and he sent me an email mocking me, saying “bye bye,” that he got me kicked out of Twitter, or that I gave up? That was the first thing that tied up so many things.”

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Why do I quote this at such goddamn length? First, bc it's how I roll. Second, because this is EVERYONE'S first experience with the Thomas Schoenberger claim: what the hell is this document you are showing me? It doesn't make sense. I don't understand it. Schoenberger proponents really do tend, essentially, to approach you with a crumpled-up document held in their hands and then shove it at you, talking a mile a minute about it as if you had the slightest idea what this was or what it was supposed to prove (or at least, that was my experience when I first encountered the claim, and I got it from several different people -- it is REALLY DISORIENTING to have multiple people start telling you a very complex story and none of them think you need context for any of it; they just assume you're already fully immersed in the material and understand the timelines and personalities involved).

***Third and most importantly***: note that our source, Arturo, is already involved in a long-running feud with Schoenberger that's personal enough that he said, "I baited Thomas and he sent me an email mocking me..." which, he claims, was the lightbulb moment.

Let's grade this for reliability:

it's too early to tell what the final score will be (you'd need to read the whole thing and fact-check it, to the extent that you are able), but there's DEFINITELY a hard cap on how reliable you'll find a source if they're in a years-long feud with whoever they're accusing. And from what Tavoyovsky has said so far, that appears to be the situation.

How about relevance? Well, we haven't gotten, really, to the parts where Arturo tries to back up his claims yet.

But he starts off by saying there's a nebulous connection between Schoenberger and Jerome Corsi (the interviewer is as confused by this as I am), then...


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"Tafoyovsky: “And the fact that he infiltrated Jerome Corsi, and the thing is that Corsi offered that service of attaching people to that email… so it is kind of like a repeated scheme that Thomas does… he just leaves footprints everywhere… and also—”

Trujillo: “—Everywhere—”

Tafoyovsky: “—patterns that he cannot escape from. Maybe this can answer your question better. I made the connection because when I searched the email that Thomas sent me, an A858 email, [10:09] I searched it, it sent me to the http://Pi.Mobi puzzle.” (NOTE: This is something created, apparently, by Schoenberger.)

Tafoyovsky: “That was Thomas’s original puzzle. It showed me results of Defango talking about the leaked emails between Q and Jerome Corsi.”

Trujillo: “Where are those leaked emails? Who has them?” [10:39]

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This is the key question! And 4chan troll Defango is the custodian:

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"Tafoyovsky: “Well, Defango put out a Pastebin. With links. Probably, you can say that it is decently documented. [10:56]. I can send it to you if you want.”

He did so, and so here it is:

https://pastebin.com/index/DyQ2Fa40

I cloned it for safekeeping here:

https://pastebin.com/E7ymWLh3 " (NOTE: Only the clone is still available.)

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 But when you look at the document, there is, at most, ONE line in it that seems to present Schoenberger as MAYBE involved in QAnon... IF you take it out of context *and* if Schoenberger is even the author of the email, which at this point Tafoyovsky has not really established.

I mean, it's VERY hard to see how that document is supposed to "prove" anything, even if we COULD trust it, which we can't because the custodian of it is a notorious right-wing troll who lies for sport and that's a *huge* red flag.

So lemme ask you: what is the reliability and relevance score at this point in the interview? I would say: terminally low.

And I would not fault a journalist who tried to extricate themselves from the interview. Would you?

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INTERLUDE 2

Here's the thing: just because Arturo is *bad at presenting the evidence* doesn't mean that he's *wrong about Schoenberger*. Lots of people have true information but struggle to organize and present it, right? In theory we shouldn't hold this fragmented, disjointed presentation against Tafoyovsky. But in practice, it is a VERY bad first impression, and people absolutely WILL hold it against him in particular and the Schoenberger theory in general.

(But speaking of first impressions, full disclosure: the first time I encountered Arturo was when -- after I discovered six lost Q drops dating to 10/29/17 -- he blazed into my mentions to more or less call me a fraud, suggesting that Schoenberger had "told [me] specifically where to search" before sarcastically inviting me to "tell everyone in the thread how did you get the Info" and finishing with a backhanded compliment: "I give it that you are good convincing people." The tweet is at https://twitter.com/ATafoyovsky/status/1310022230047223809?s=20 and my response, in which I did indeed tell everyone how I got the info, is in the thread below it. Needless to say, Arturo and I are not pals! But I HAVE maintained friendly relations with other Schoenberger proponents, notably Daniel Morrison/@River_Advntures, and have spent dozens of hours reviewing Schoenberger-related evidence with him.)


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CONCLUSION

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What kills me about this whole discussion is: yes, I think the LARP hypothesis is more likely to be true than the Schoenberger hypothesis. Of COURSE I think I'm right and they're wrong. I *would* think that, wouldn't I?

But... it doesn't *matter* who's right.

QAnon is a problem, not because of Q, but because of the anons. Millions of people were willing to join a fascist death cult that promised there would be a golden age once all of Trump's enemies were killed and he reigned unopposed.

Is it worth pursuing the question of who was writing the drops? Yes, because the truth is important for its own sake. I am actively involved in efforts to figure it out from the non-Schoenberger side, and I'll still keep looking at  material from Schoenberger proponents -- I owe Daniel Morrison a call at some point in the next couple of weeks to review his latest output, in fact. It's possible they'll convince me that they're right.

But I cannot and will not make this the main focus of my research. I realize that Schoenberger people WANT me to, but ultimately the whole reason we're writing about QAnon is that *huge numbers of our fellow Americans were buying what Q was selling*.

So Q's identity, as Chris Taylor/@chrisjudetaylor wrote, "doesn’t matter at all! The means and media" by which Q's message spread "are the same regardless of source, and the mass base for fascism existed regardless of source. The debate solid researchers are getting sucked into is such a time waste."

Chris is absolutely right. And for now, I'm done being sucked.


... ... ... wait, no, that came out sounding wrong. Oh God, I need to end the article before somebody notices.