How a failed screenwriter used QAnon to smear people he blamed for rejected scripts

Rolling Stone has published another excerpt from Daily Beast reporter Will Sommer's just-released book about the QAnon phenomenon and it details how a failed Hollywood screenwriter used the conspiracy theory to smear the people whom he blamed for his scripts getting rejected.

The screenwriter in question is a man named Robert Cornero, who until two years ago posted online as a QAnon influencer known as Neon Revolt and who garnered a particularly obsession with a writer named Franklin Leonard, who publishes influential reports about promising unproduced movie scripts, many of which eventually get picked up and made into movies.

Upset that Leonard had never chosen one of his own scripts for his influential annual list, Cornero decided to use his clout as a QAnon influencer to paint Leonard as the tool of a Satanist cabal intent on ripping apart the social fabric of American society.

This resulted in Leonard getting bombarded with angry messages and threats on social media, which left him confused because he wasn't a high-profile public figure such as Tom Hanks, Oprah Winfrey, or other usual QAnon targets.

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"I’m just some random guy," Leonard explained to Sommer.

For his part, Cornero relished the power he now wielded to bring misery to the people whom he blamed for tanking his career as a screenwriter.

“They just had to endure it for days and weeks on end... there was really nothing they could do about it," he wrote at one point of the enjoyment he got from leading smear campaigns.

Sommer's book, called "Trust the Plan: The Rise of QAnon and the Conspiracy That Unhinged America" is now available to buy.