QAnon Conspiracy Theories: Investigating a Viral Meme

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A viral post on Facebook claim that

this logo represents Anubis,
the ancient Egyptian God

of death and the afterlife.

The rumors circulated
among groups tied to QAnon,

the once fringe conspiracy
theory that has made its way

into the mainstream.

QAnon members said the logo revealed

a deep state plot against Americans.

They shared fears
that these testing trucks

were up to something nefarious.

- Of course it turns out the
logo is actually an aardvark.

- An aardvark?

- Yes, an aardvark,

which I learned is an African
mammal who is nocturnal

and feeds largely on bugs.

- Sarah Spencer, a
journalist with factcheck.org,

ventured down the virtual rabbit hole

to figure out where this logo came from

and how it ended up linked
to an Egyptian death deity.

- [Sarah] We initially were presented

with this meme on Facebook.

Why does COVID-19
testing facility have a logo

of Anubis, the God of death?

The first step would be to do just

a basic reverse image search.

It can kind of give
you a starting off point

and give you a sense of maybe
how widespread something is.

You can see obviously where
the person who put together

this meme shows to select in red,

indicating what they
think is interesting about it.

That will often skew an image search

but you can also click and download

and then put it into any
photo editing software.

In a picture like this, I
would crop it like that,

so that you get part
of an actual picture.

Then you can plug that picture

into your standard reverse image search.

Here in TinEye you can
select your cropped version.

In TinEye, unlike in Google,

you can sort by newest to oldest.

So in this case, it was used in

a Philadelphia business journal story

about this area business
that gad started retooling

its trucks to be used

as mobile testing units during COVID-19.

They identify the name of the
company as Aardvark Mobile.

So then just a simple,
very simple internet search,

a pretty obvious first result

is the Aardvark Mobile Tours website

that shares the same logo
that you see on the truck.

You see they have a
mobile health care unit.

- [Hari] Oh, that looks pretty close.

- [Sarah] Very similar setup,
yeah, very similar setup.

One thing that TinEye is really good at

is finding where images
first started showing up online.

One of its first iterations showed up

on 8Kun, which is a message
board that often is home

to conspiracy theorists threads.

It's where a lot of
conspiracy theories develop

and then bubble up
before they start showing up

on Facebook and Twitter.

- So your tip to a general reader,

if they see an image that
makes these kinds of claims,

what's the first thing they should have

in the back of their mind?

And then what's the
first thing they should do?

- If you're scrolling
through your social media,

you see something
that really speaks to you

and really feels right,
and you think, yes,

that really solidifies what I think,

that should be a warning to you

that it might be questionable.

Often you'll find that
the facts that are included

in memes that feel the
most right, are actually wrong.

- The world feels scary right now

and the future feels unknown.

Reading something on the internet

and assuming the worst,
seems almost reasonable.

But as Sarah said, if it feels right,

you might wanna check first.

And if something requires
an elaborate explanation,

maybe there's a simpler answer.

Sometimes a logo is just a logo.

Sometimes an aardvark
is just an aardvark.

And why by the way,

is this truck company
named after an aardvark?

- The owner of Aardvark
Tours chose the name aardvark

because it starts with
AA and way back when,

when there were yellow
pages and the phone book.

- Sure, we had AA carpet
cleaning, AAA carpet cleaning.

- An aardvark starts with two A's.

So, that's how that came to be.

- Until next time don't
spread fake news, keep it real.

I'm Hari Sreenivasan
and this is take on faith.

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