week 19-23 April

Some of QAnon’s recent adherents are women who’ve been “asking questions” for years of doctors, the pharmaceutical industry, and teachers. You could call these people “untraditional” or “hippies” or, as the influencer who posted “SLAVERY STILL EXISTS.” put it in her Instagram bio, “non-conformist.” Many are vaccine “sceptical”; others are into raw milk or hawk essential oils via multilevel marketing schemes. They span the political spectrum but share a distrust of large institutions and a desire to arrive at their own understanding of what works for them and their families. They place a premium on “doing their own research,” which is exactly what Q invites followers to do.

Following up on last week’s tutorial, I decided to continue looking into the role of the pastel Instagram aesthetic in spreading false information and attracting a specific audience (influencers and bloggers) to the Qanon group.

This time, however, in order to reach out to a younger generation of lifestyle influencers, I created a conspiracy that advocates for leaving the avocados alone, which have been criticised for jeopardising sustainability. Avocados are grown in monoculture plantations, which are known to deplete soil nutrients and make them more susceptible to disease, necessitating the use of numerous pesticides and fertilisers. As its popularity has grown, some countries have enacted legislation restricting its production in order to reduce its consumption. Clearly, this has put these influencers’ lives and, more importantly, their social media feeds under threat, so I believe it is a topic that can pique their interest.

The idea is to use the hashtag as bait to convince people to start their own investigation into in the issue, similar to the #savethechildren campaign. When they begin searching for more detail, the font appears to assist them in visualising how conspiracies function and how dangerous they can be.

The beginning shape is a serif typeface with rounded edges. Its shape is inspired by avocados and aims to be welcoming and friendly to the eye.

It then varies into other more complex shapes according to different axis:

DEPTH: represents how far someone can fall into the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories. It closes any open counters, demonstrating an aversion to outside viewpoints, as shown by people who have been following conspiracy theories for some time.

TIME: It converts a serif typeface into a gothic-inspired typeface with rough and pointy edges to express violence and animosity on the opposite end of the spectrum.

SPREAD: illustrates the effect of continuous sharing and spreading of information, which causes it to lose its original meaning and become a new narrative. As a result, this variable distorts the original shape by adding noise in the form of curves, which can reduce the letter’s legibility.

some experiments: