Q: Into the Storm

This is how the story goes.

One of Donald Trump's most trusted people

who has a Q level security clearance

is dropping information anonymously online.

Q posts, and then Trump

says something similar,

and then they tie that all together

in the proof Q exists.

QAnon is almost sort of a-- a mega conspiracy theory,

but much vaguer.

To understand QAnon,

you have to start at the place where Q posts.

So, I was getting on a plane to hang out with the guys

behind the most notorious website on earth.

If anyone knew who was behind Q,

it would be those closest to the source.

(video game-style music playing)

Filmmaker: On my way to Manila, I had a layover in Hong Kong.

The view from my window was not all that different

from the one in Drop 130.

At this point, Q had been posting for just over a year.

Manila was home to the team behind 8chan,

the site where Q posts.

And I was planning to meet with the site's creator,

Fred Brennan, for the first time in person.

I had noticed that social media platforms were increasingly restricting

certain types of speech online,

and I was curious to what extent Q and 8chan,

a site that was unapologetic

about allowing almost any type of speech,

played a role in that debate.

I assume that's why they agreed to meet with me.

It was really a dice roll whether or not this trip was going to pay off.

Fred hadn't provided an address,

or even an exact time to meet up,

but the morning we were supposed to film together,

Fred dropped his coordinates.

Filmmaker: From the beginning,

Fred was surprised by how minimalistic my setup was:

just me and a film school grad I'd hired locally.

He lived in a high-rise gated community,

and despite all the cloak and dagger...

Uh, this way.

Filmmaker: ...Fred said that he was moving soon,

so it was okay to film the grounds.

Fred had spent years cultivating

some of the wildest content the internet had to offer.

I couldn't help but wonder,

had he also played a role in shaping Q?

(intense orchestral music playing)

(Fredrick Brennan speaking Filipino)

...cheese hamburger

Chicken nuggets, the table?

-Yes. -I don't know if anybody wants it,

but if you're still hungry, you can eat it. So...

You'd be surprised how many people

come all this way to see me.

They just want to meet me.

The image in their head does not match my reality.

They think that I'm, like, this amazing guy

that made this amazing website and I changed the world.

And I see myself as

somebody who was in the right place at the right time.

Yeah.

I think most of them go away disappointed,

but at least they get to eat curry rice

during their disappointment.

I grew up with just unfettered access to the internet.

And I grew up also disabled,

so I couldn't go run outside and play

with the neighborhood kids,

so throughout my life,

almost all of my friends have been online friends.

Like, since the beginning.

Ready?

I have osteogenesis imperfecta.

It's caused by a single mutation

in a gene that makes collagen.

So the bones don't form correctly,

so they become really brittle, like glass.

I was always very self-conscious about my disability.

I fought a lot with both my parents about,

you know, "Why did you have kids? You knew this would happen.

You received genetic counseling. What's wrong with you?"

And it caused a lot of, like, teenage angst, also.

My challenges around mobility did make me more

intellectually curious, because

there wasn't a whole lot else that I could do.

Filmmaker: The internet leveled the playing field.

So Fred spent almost all of his time online,

which meant his digital self matured at a rapid pace.

So much so that, by the age of 12,

he had already stumbled across some of the most shocking content

that the internet had to offer.

Brennan: When I first found 4chan,

I just saw what a lot of people were saying, and I felt like

I finally had discovered what people were really thinking.

Saying things like, you know,

"Gas all the crippled people." You know,

"I hate Downies. Throw them off a bridge."

I felt like I was seeing a window into people's hidden thoughts

that they weren't saying because it wasn't socially acceptable.

But this is what everybody's really thinking...

when they look at me. You know,

"Wow. Look at this crippled retard."

As a child, I was very impressionable,

and I just felt, like, wow.

I've been lied to my whole life

by people who are telling me,

"Oh, it's good to be different."

I figured, like, because the sites just seemed so active,

you say, "Wow, this is a huge number of people

that are just totally speaking the truth."

Or what I thought was the truth.

-(fires) -So,

I feel like the internet really changed my perspective

of the world a lot.

Don't smoke, kids, or else you'll become like me.

I'm almost the dead baby.

Like, I'm one step after the dead baby.

-If the baby doesn't die... -Filmmaker: When Fred was 19,

he became admin of a site called Wizardchan.

The forum was a home for male incels.

That is, virgins who think they'll never have sex,

and just generally hate women because of that.

But after Fred did some drugs and slept with a prostitute,

who had, well, two fetishes...

She had a fetish for virgins, male virgins,

and disabled people.

So, I was both.

Filmmaker: Fred was no longer a virgin,

so he resigned as admin of Wizardchan.

-Woman (chanting): Shame! Shame! -(crowd booing)

Filmmaker: While on his digital walk of shame,

Fred began to look for a new edge to lord over.

He was still an active user on 4chan,

but he couldn't create a board

without approval from the site's owner.

Meanwhile, Reddit, its more mainstream competitor,

allowed anyone to create boards,

but wasn't anonymous.

Brennan: I was just thinking, wow, wouldn't it be amazing

if Reddit and 4chan had a baby,

and everyone could make their own board.

Filmmaker: So he merged Reddit's democratized board creation

with 4chan's anonymous posting, and presto:

8chan was born.

Now anyone could create a board,

and posts could be totally anonymous.

Brennan: But when I wrote 8chan originally in 2013,

I wasn't really planning for success.

I wrote the first part of it while I was coming off of

psychedelic mushrooms.

Like, you know, they call it the come down, I think.

It wasn't meant to scale from 100 posts per day

to, like, 10,000 posts per hour.

Filmmaker: This free speech maximalist approach

had given Fred an edge,

but he now had a serious moderation problem,

because illegal content, like child porn,

would get shared, as well.

Brennan: I had no idea that the hosting

was gonna be so hard.

I had no idea how my payment processing worked.

I was just on the "hopium" of free speech and all that.

Filmmaker: Fred created 8chan in 2013.

He was 19 years old.

With a mass influx of users, Fred needed help.

It seemed he also wanted to find a partner

who would let him continue to run the site as its admin.

Brennan: I started to get lots of emails from people

that were interested in running 8chan on their own.

Of all the offers I received,

I chose, uh, Jim Watkins and his son Ron,

because I felt they had the most experience with this.

I would say overall Jim is a good owner for 8chan.

I would say that Jim is not tech savvy at all.

Jim is much more the business brain,

and Ron is much more of a technical brain.

I would describe Ron as a tech bro, pretty much.

He's a talented programmer, also.

In some ways, more talented than I am.

Filmmaker: Jim Watkins is an American businessman

operating out of the Philippines.

Jim served in East Asia while he was in the army,

and found a dollar went a long way.

He offered for Fred to come join them,

along with a handful of perks.

Brennan: So it was a no-brainer for me to sell 8chan to them,

and move to the Philippines.

Like, they offered me, you know, a condo with the rent paid.

Jim Watkins: When's the last time you went swimming?

-Eight years ago. I was 12. Yeah. -Jim Watkins: Wow.

Brennan: And then a caregiver also.

Jim Watkins: Let go. It's okay. We know CPR.

Filmmaker: Fred had even found a fiancée in the Philippines.

He now had plans to get married in just a few months.

So working with Jim Watkins

helped him support this new life.

Brennan: They kept me on, as like,