John McAfee, founder of McAfee Associates Inc., speaks during the Shape the Future: Blockchain Global Summit in Hong Kong, China, on Wednesday, Sept. 20, 2017.(Anthony Kwan/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Unraveling viral disinformation and explaining where it came from, the harm it's causing, and what we should do about it.
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McAfee has never really been a major figure for the QAnon community, even though his anti-government and anti-tax stances meant he shared a similar worldview with many QAnon followers.
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And the time he said he would “eat [his] own dick” if the value of one bitcoin didn’t reach $1 million by the end 2020—a bet he backed out of pretty quickly.
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Even when he talked about QAnon, McAfee trolled the conspiracy cult’s true believers. Back in 2018, when the conspiracy theory was just beginning to gain traction, he joked that “if ‘Q’ will identify themselves, I will offer them the running mate position for my presidential campaign. If you're hearing this ‘Q’, then please give this thoughtful consideration.”He continued to mock QAnon throughout 2020.
While McAfee attempted to maintain the pretence that everything he was saying was true, at times the mask slipped to reveal his true nature. In February 2020 he offered this advice to his 1.1 million Twitter followers: “You want to troll? Do it on your page. Like I do on mine. That's what your page is for.”