The "Alt National Park Service," Part 4: A Litany Against Fear
AltNPS is a fictional character.
To be honest, I’ve put off writing this for quite a while.
I’ve said before that no matter how much the Alt National Park Service account bothers me, I always want to give grace to its followers. These are people who are searching for a light in the darkness, and I can’t pretend that I’m not doing the same. I’m using this blog as a small way to feel like I’m contributing to a cause, and when I look at the people who dutifully leave random comments on AltNPS's posts (as the account requested), I wonder if our motivations are really all that different.
So with empathy in mind1, let’s look at how AltNPS’s most ardent followers respond to doubters, and why.
Fear is the Mind-Killer
Under each of the Numbers posts, there will inevitably be at least one hater. A Doubting Thomas who will say something like “hey, doesn't this smell a lot like QAnon?”
Without fail, these people get told to shut up, and are often accused of being Trump voters, far-right trolls, or even paid agitators.
In the replies to these skeptics, a narrative quickly forms: because the account is vital to democracy and constantly under threat, questioning the account must be dangerous and harmful. Honest disagreement becomes malicious subversion. A random user expressing doubt about AltNPS can’t just be an honest skeptic, it has to be that they’re a MAGA infiltrator here to sow fear, uncertainty and doubt. This makes for a community of followers who are utterly hostile to criticism of the account, and who are quick to assign conspiratorial intent to even the most mundane pushback.
As I wrote in my first piece on AltNPS, I think many of the account’s followers have a deep emotional need for the account to be legit. They need to believe that someone is fighting for them, that patriots are in control, and that all they need to do is trust the plan. And as I said before, I understand that need; I would love it if there was a coalition in my corner, fighting my battles.
But as AltNPS’s followers come to see the account as an emotional lifeline, they start to view criticism of the account as a threat to that lifeline. And in response to a threat, people lash out.
“It’s Code for a Reason”
When followers jump in to defend AltNPS and their alleged coded messaging, they often fall back on one reliable argument: that such things are not for us to know, and that for the good of the movement, you should really stop asking questions.
I could say something sarcastic about how the aggressive policing of anyone questioning the leader’s message is always a good sign, but what I see here, more than anything, is fear.
In Dan Olson’s documentary Line Goes Up, he describes the rise and fall of the NFT craze, and how the market for these digital “financial assets” was spearheaded by fervent communities of true believers he refers to as “self-organizing high-control groups.” These groups were so invested in the idea that they were the chosen insiders, and were so afraid of what would happen if that wasn’t true, that they would ruthlessly resist any form of doubt in their projects, and Olson describes this in a way that’s always stuck with me:
Questions that would be utterly banal in any other investment forum (what has the team done, what assets do they have, why should anyone believe they can deliver on their promises), are treated as hostile.
And the frank reality is because there aren’t answers.
When someone asks AltNPS why they’re posting numbers on Facebook instead of doing anything else with their platform, that’s a question that should have a straightforward answer. Something as simple as "we’re communicating with a network of agents” would at least be a concrete claim, but AltNPS doesn’t even seem willing to do that; the closest we’ve ever gotten to an explanation is a winking insistence that they “can’t explain everything - sorry!” As we’ve seen, they’re happy to let their followers write the story for them, and in the absence of real evidence, a narrative of secret codes and digital soldiers has emerged.
And God help you if you question that narrative. Questions are treated as hostile because there aren’t answers. There is no purpose behind the numbers. There is no code. And to a community of people who have staked so much hope on those codes, the idea that it could all be fake is terrifying.
Endnote: “What does it matter whether you understand?”
Several years ago, when QAnon was at its peak, I stumbled upon an article in Medium by user RabbitRabbit that described the Q phenomenon with incredible clarity. Sorry for the long excerpt, but this gets at the heart of AltNPS’s behavior, and it says it better than I ever could:
I’m afraid this needs to be said. Q is not a real person, but a fictional character.
QAnon uses the oldest trope of all mystery fiction. A mysterious stranger shows up and drops a strange clue leading to long-hidden secrets which his clues, and your detecting power, can reveal. […]
It doesn’t work that way. The fictional mysterious stranger already knows, but instead of telling you the answer in the first ten minutes, they give you clues. Hard to follow clues. Ambiguous clues. They say things like “Follow the money. Don’t let them fool you. This goes all the way to the top.”
There is no reason for this in reality, but fictionally, this is what creates the whole plot, the sense of mystery, and everything entertaining that is to follow. This is the white rabbit. This is the breadcrumb trail out of the forest.
It doesn’t work for reality. Real people in the government with important information to disseminate deliver it as fast as possible, usually all in one go. They don’t make you solve things. They try to be as specific as possible. They are whistleblowers. Daniel Ellsberg (the Pentagon Papers). Edward Snowden. Chelsea Manning. Etc.
Q is NOT a whistleblower. Q is a “plot device.” Q is fictional and acts exactly like a fictional character acts. This is because the purpose of Q is not to divulge actual information, but to create fiction.
If AltNPS wanted to divulge information, if they wanted to share resources, if they wanted to genuinely coordinate activism across the country, they’d be doing it. Instead, they’re posting fake codes and bad poetry to build a sense of mystique. They’re not building a movement. They’re building a character.
With this in mind, I want to drill down on this last image in particular, because I think it will be a point of contention: even if all of this is fake, who cares? Isn't it enough that it “gives some of us hope that something is happening?”
But something is happening. Massive protests. Incredible bravery. Democratic governors threatening me with a good time. Real work, with real results, is happening in the real world, and you can join in and make a difference. You can.
What isn’t happening is underground spy work. And if it was, it wouldn’t be happening out in the open.
AltNPS is not spurring real activism. It’s actively distracting from it.
I’m serious. Be kind to this account’s followers. The account is the problem, not the people who follow it.