Desperation, Conspiracies, and The Heroes Who Aren't Coming
In a time where so many feel so helpless about the state of the world, many continue to grasp at the straws of grifters
On February 28th, 2025, I noticed some strange posts from a Facebook account called the Alt National Parks Service (AltNPS). They would post a series of numbers, colors, and phrases on their social media accounts, then add phrases like “public disregard” in the comments. Thousands of followers replied with things like “Oh, I can’t wait until they make a movie about this” or “Thank you for all you are doing to resist in these times.” While it was surreal, it didn’t take me long to recognize what was going on.
For those of you who don’t know, AltNPS is a group of people who once claimed to be National Park employees using their positions in the federal government to resist the rapid changes taking place under the first Trump Administration in 2017. Basically, they purported to be a secret band of rebels taking on the empire from within. The Alt NPS began with a Twitter account claiming to be a group of NPS park rangers who needed to remain anonymous to avoid reprisals. However, per TechCrunch, AltNPS posted on January 26, 2017, that no US government employees were involved and that control of the account had been turned over to "several activists & journalists".
And their popularity exploded. It didn’t take long for them to gain millions of followers on social media. The idea that a brave bunch of souls who dedicated their lives to protecting our parks were now taking on a corrupt government made many people feel good and gave them some hope. That’s the powerful part, and I will get to that.
For years, the AltNPS never posted secret codes or were anything like a cloak-and-dagger operation. The only constant in their approach has been a long-running online merchandise shop selling stickers and T-shirts.
But when the codes and replies started on the Alt National Parks Service posts, I recognized them as the exact same kind I had seen years earlier. When that cousin told me about “Q” in 2018, I was dismissive but also intrigued as to how this lifelong apolitical person I knew somehow got to the point of spewing grand global conspiracies. When I looked into it later, I was horrified by what I saw growing in online forums. I spent way too much time on 4chan and other channels, absolutely fascinated by the growth of what was obviously, to me, complete balderdash.
The adherents of Q were (and are) convinced that they were witnessing a high-level conspiracy that would unravel our existence as we know it and expose the wicked of the world. The posts were codes and riddles meant to be solved to reveal high-level plans by someone working to take down the system from within. You could not break them out of that mindset. Trust me, I tried a few times.
Informing people early on wasn’t very fun either.
When I spoke to a group in Atlanta in early 2019 on contemporary issues radicalizing people, I brought up QAnon and groups like the Boogaloo Bois and the Proud Boys. Even after I said to those gathered, “What I am about to say is going to sound completely outlandish, but we have to pay attention to this because it will likely end up being a major issue for everyone,” I was almost ridiculed right out of the building.
The thought of a massive group of people believing some of the things I described was a bridge too far for most gathered. I understood their disbelief. It was also hard for me to believe that serious people were using words like “boogaloo” to describe their group. The fact it’s tied to an obscure 1980s movie on breakdancing makes the whole premise even more ridiculous. “That is the point, though,” I told them. “It creates this weird case of plausible deniability. I mean, who is gonna believe any serious people are calling themselves Proud Boys, right?”
Like everyone there, I wondered how someone could fall for something like that at the time. That is, until earlier last year when I began seeing followers of the Alt National Parks Service responding in the same ways as people who were vehement that Q’s prophecies were real. My suspicions were confirmed when I was met with the same pushback by followers of AltNPS that I received from followers of QAnon. Somewhere along the way, others noticed and coined the term BlueAnon.
And woooo did that make some people angry.
“How can you compare us to those idiots with QAnon?” someone angrily replied to my Facebook post pointing out the striking similarities. I was shocked by the pushback and by who it came from. These were people I know to be highly intelligent and who, at one time, I believed would have dismissed posts like these as ridiculous:
Now these aren’t right-wing extremists I am talking about. They’re your librarians, your volunteers who keep the community garden going in town, people with advanced degrees in biomedical sciences, and folks like your liberal uncle who once thought QAnon was so ridiculous and took great joy in making fun of people running around with WWG1WGA stickers on their pickup trucks.
This was the types of reactions I would see to the posts above:
*Exactly the same kinds of replies as QAnon to certain Q Drops that made zero sense*
And when I said “Uh, hey guys this is basically QAnon stuff” thinking people would say “You know this is ridiculous. What are they doing?” I was hit with the exact same things QAnon adherents told me when I pushed back on their claims. But this time it was much more of a “How dare you compare us to them?” tone and, far more often, even more dismissive than when I would speak to people who think QAnon is real.
The posts from AltNPS were codes and riddles meant to communicate high-level plans by someone working to take down the system from within. People saw the posts as riddles to solve, and many speculated on the meaning, from counting letters to picking out individual words and letters. Many tried and reached their own conclusions. Quite often, people would post that they cannot wait for the truth to be revealed.
You know, exactly like QAnon.
But my post became the first in my thousands of online posts to be ratioed. I had very few positive engagements, but plenty of people telling me how wrong I was. I let it go and didn’t say much more. I’m trying to reduce my stress, and being scolded as ridiculous by people I respect online isn’t very fun. Especially when I know I am right.
Then I was reminded of the whole ordeal from earlier today, over a year after my original post. I decided to check in on AltNPS, and, thankfully, it’s clear that many eyes have since been opened to the group.
Sadly, even more eyes are clenched firmly shut while saying, “But they’re doing great work, and you don’t understand it!” to anyone who says it’s ridiculous. The strange thing is this: All of the coded posts that were supposedly informing those in the know of plans to fight back between embedded government employees? They just stopped doing it months ago. AltNPS now posts news as if they are breaking it, memes created by others, and just outright plagiarizes real journalists. And they are still selling t-shirts, hoodies, and stickers. (Author’s Note: Lately they are claiming they are giving the proceeds to nonprofits, but there is no proof of anything. They maintain their anonymity, claiming they would be in danger if their identities were known. There is no way to validate their claim.)
They also completely changed their X/Twitter handle that kicked the whole thing off. Now they are @NotALTWorld. Weird, eh?
As for the people who believed the secret coded posts just like QAnon? It’s a case study in both preservation of belief and the need to feel in control of the world at large when it’s being scarier than usual.
If we have people on the inside, then we can support them and resist what we are seeing, right? And as digital warriors, we find our helplessness transformed into a sense that we are a part of something bigger that will solve the big scary issue that keeps us up at night. It gives hope, but that is what grifters like AltNPS feed off of to farm engagement that puts money in their bank accounts. Our critical thinking/bullshit meters should be even more attuned to things like that.
And the people behind AltNPS are able to do what they do because Humans need to feel some semblance of control when they feel desperation about the world. If you can provide that, people will follow you. People I have known for years, and who know I am an honest and ethical man, dismissed me out of hand when I implied AltNPS was just a grift to sell merchandise. They chose anonymous strangers over someone they know. It shook me up a bit, but I am a wee bit older and a tad bit wiser because of it.
Too many are becoming prey to bad actors who actively work to profit from people’s desperation, exploiting it to build social media engagement and, in turn, potential profits. They can do this while simultaneously convincing people to trust them over people they actually know, because they give followers the impression that they are handling things in a world where it seems no one is taking on the bad guys.
Now, we all want to believe that the Marvel Universe is real on some level, and that there are heroes who will show up in the darkness to bring about the dawn when we feel we can do nothing.
But that’s not how the world works. We have to put real work in where we are, in a collective effort together, to make things better. Yes, it is difficult, but it’s the only way to effect actual change.
This whole episode is also a case study showing no one is immune to propaganda and misinformation/disinformation, especially when they want it to be true. BlueSky liberals can ridicule QAnon adherents all they want, but when the world started going in a direction they feared, many on the left did the same thing people on the right did when it came to QAnon. That is a fact. Just like QAnon, the AltNPS codes went nowhere. And, just like QAnon, people moved on without acknowledging it.
AltNPS still has millions of followers with hundreds of thousands of engagements a day.
I have a pretty simple rule. If someone is telling me something they think I want to hear, all while selling me merch, then the sale is the motive, and I am highly suspicious of the rest.
“Enter the word Hannity at checkout for a discount on these bootleg erectile dysfunction pills… …also buy gold and get a reverse mortgage as a hedge against Islamic Extremism!” Something like that.
We live in an era of terrible legacy media and massive distrust in all news across the board. We should probably be more skeptical of an anonymous social media account claiming to be a news source that, more often than not, just rewrites what others have written to keep the outrage engagement going to sell merch. Better yet, we should probably throw all of our electronic devices in a river. A deep one. With a strong current.
tl:dr/PS:
- None of us are immune to manipulation by propaganda or misinformation. If people are telling you what you want to hear while asking you to buy t-shirts, then you should be suspicious of them. Unless it’s a really cool shirt. Then, by all means, set your critical thinking skills to the side. Seriously, though, I will acknowledge that QAnon has done and continues to do far more damage to our country, but choosing to suspend critical thinking isn’t good for anyone, in anything. It certainly isn’t the answer as a response. And while there may be far more of the QAnon persuasion, the root cause that allowed it to thrive is the same one that keeps the AltNPS grift going.
- I forgot to mention 2 attendees at that event in Atlanta (where I was basically run out of the room) called and apologized the day after January 6th, 2021. Heh.
- And just last night Dan Scavino made a post that brought a bunch of the QAnon zombies back to life. Let me tell ya, X User @Brick_Suit is a sharp one
- After defeating the deep state, or whatever the hell it was they were doing last year, Alternative National Parks Service is back in it for the lolz. Don’t lose your joy fighting the evil empire, AltNPS.
- Here are a few more sources about AltNPS so that you don’t have to take my word for it:
The Alt NPS Resistance Account is So Obviously Fake
The Alt National Park Service Can't Stop Sharing Fake News
BlueAnon: A Podcast on the Alt National Park Service
I think this is the longest “I told you so” I have ever written. That was fun.
The desire/need/proclivity to want to believe there is a human “master plan,” run by a small cabal of self/serving masterminds is not new. Friends of ours in the 70s were exceedingly convinced. As you stated, highly educated. He even wrote a book about it which is, I believe, at the cabin. The Rockefellers were key in that scenario.