Sara Aniano/Twitter
February 19, 2021, 1:19 pm
Much of the country has been hit with extreme winter weather this week, with the most dramatic example coming in Texas. Snow, ice, and freezing temperatures brought the state’s power grid on the precipice of collapse, and some Texans are still without power, water, or both.
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Yet there are QAnon believers who are sharing conspiracy theories that the snow is not actually real snow.
Sara Aniano went to the depths of QAnon Instagram to report on this. She noted, “Somewhere at the cross-section of QAnon/garden variety conspiracy theorists is this obsession with the snow in Texas – particularly the theory that it is not organic in origin, but man-made.”
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Sharing a screenshot of video showing a demo that may or may not be real, she added, “The chief concern here is that the snow apparently “doesn’t melt,” and then concluded, in all caps, “I’M SO TIRED.”
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People who experienced the generational winter weather event went to Twitter to assure everyone that the snow was, indeed, very real, very cold, and very much interfering with their day-to-day lives.
One respondent remarked, “OMG, we’ve all been melting snow on the stove or fire FOR DAYS just to flush our toilets!!!” adding, “IT F—KING MELTS!”
OMG, we’ve all been melting snow on the stove or fire FOR DAYS just to flush our toilets!!! IT FUCKING MELTS!
— Flutterby
(@goodhuman77) February 18, 2021
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Another respondent, Josephine Jones, remarked, “I, for one, welcome our new Weird Chemical Fake Snow Making Overlords,” adding “SMDH” for effect.
Another person noted, “I live in the Caribbean and have never seen snow. I know how snow works,” before going on to wonder what was wrong with these people.
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And, for “these people,” it’s not just the snow. According to VICE, another Texas power grid-related conspiracy theory circulated this week.
“The basic outline of the theory,” the author patiently explained, “is that President Joe Biden allowed China access to the U.S. power grid when he signed the Keystone Pipeline Executive Order, and by doing so somehow allowed China to hack the U.S. power grid and cause the blackouts that Texas has suffered over the last week.”
Except for facts: Texas controls its own grid, and as the Texas Tribune reported, “Officials with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, which operates the power grid that covers most of the state, said Texas was dangerously close to a worst-case scenario: uncontrolled blackouts across the state.”
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ERCOT was able to save the Texas grid from what could have been a months-long rebuild—but saved it by depriving literally millions of Texans of power during the worst of the weather event.
That didn’t stop Q-lievers like Poker and Politics for blaming Biden and China, however, as in this tweet. “This seems like something Q should have prevented by having Trump win re-election,” the tweeter reasoned, “but as QAnon says, ‘It had to be this way.’
Note: This Texas-based reporter can assure you the snow is real, having shoveled and trod through a fair bit of it this week.
*First Published: February 19, 2021, 1:19 pm
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