Some were so excited they couldn’t sleep. Others brought popcorn to watch Joe Biden’s inauguration be interrupted by soldiers storming in to arrest him and other Democrats.
But in the end, the followers of the QAnon mass delusion could do nothing but watch in disbelief as events in the Capitol unfolded like clockwork.
Joe Biden was inaugurated as President, and Donald Trump had left office.
On forums and sites like TheDonald.win, Telegram, 8Kun and other social media networks, excitement led to devastation as reality sunk in. They’d been duped.
“It’s over and nothing makes sense,” said one QAnon follower on TheDonald.
“Been played like fools,” wrote another on Telegram.
“This was all a lie,” was another’s reaction on Telegram.
For years, followers of the baseless QAnon movement had “trusted the plan” and believed in “the Storm”: when members of a global child sex trafficking ring, they believed, would be arrested and executed, and Donald Trump – whom they believed was fighting the cabal – would remain in power.
But they watched as even Ron Watkins, one of the most prominent followers of the conspiracy movement, called it quits.
“We gave it our all. Now we need to keep our chins up and go back to our lives as best we are able,” he wrote under the username CodeMonkeyZ.
“We have a new president sworn in and it is our responsibility as citizens to respect the Constitution regardless of whether or not we agree with the specifics of details regarding officials who are sworn in.”
Mr Watkins then told followers to remember the community they had built, before plugging “a new project” to come soon.
Belinda Barnet, a senior media and communications lecturer at Swinburne University of Technology who has been tracking the reactions, said many QAnon believers were disillusioned after dedicating much of their lives to following “clues” being dropped by ‘Q’ – only to see nothing eventuate.
“This is like the last straw for some of them,” she told SBS News.
“I’m seeing a lot of people saying that they’re feeling sad, and disillusioned, and they’ve dedicated so much time to this, and they’ve been duped or tricked.
“There’s a degree of sadness that the theory that they had created and followed has not come to fruition.”
Mike Rothschild, a researcher on conspiracy theories who is writing a book on QAnon, said believers appeared to be in shock seeing Joe Biden being sworn in and becoming president.
“This type of failure was something that most of them never allowed to penetrate their minds, so to see it happening – and then rendered powerless to stop it – is truly jarring,” Mr Rothschild told SBS News.
‘Biden is Q’: The evolution of QAnon
But experts say while many will give up, other die-hard conspiracy theorists will simply adapt and evolve their beliefs.
Mr Rothschild said it’s likely most followers will continue to believe some version of their previous theories, but with some details changing.
“It will evolve into something that uses the mythology of Q without the idea of mass arrests, because that’s not realistic with Biden in office,” he said.
“But the belief in a deep state that controls world politics and money is a very old one, and won’t go anywhere.”
Faced with the unthinkable, some QAnon believers quickly moved on to claim Mr Biden was actually their saviour and not Mr Trump.
“Biden is Q” read a post on TheDonald.win, a new line that was adopted by some influencers of the movement, but rubbished by others.
Dr Kaz Ross, a political scientist and independent researcher into the far-right and conspiracy theories, said the movement will evolve just like it did following the “Pizzagate” affair.
“The bottom line is that QAnon, the conspiracy itself doesn’t actually need Q, because they can just invent a new Q – somebody else can fill the space,” she told SBS News.
“And the conspiracy itself which is, you know, a ‘global cabal of satanic paedophiles’ has been basically around for hundreds of years, because it’s an anti-Semitic plot.
“[They] could just dust it off and put anything else on the top of it. So I think that the general conspiracy will continue.”
Dr Ross believes it’s likely some vulnerable, disillusioned followers will be picked off by members of the alt-right or white supremacists.
“There are bad actors out there on Telegram recruiting people, actually trying to attract them to the cause,” she said.
