So the baker-followers assemble the crumbs into what they call “dough” or “bread,” to be circulated online — feverishly complex diagrams and bulletin-board collages of words and images. Bright red lines highlight connections, an approach familiar to viewers of “True Detective” or “Homeland” or “The Wire,” and satirized by a popular GIF of a wild-eyed Charlie Day, from the TV comedy “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” standing in front of a messy bulletin board. Day’s character, who is working in a corporate mailroom, has convinced himself that half of the company’s employees don’t exist, even as a friend assures him that not only are they real, but also that “they have been asking for their mail on a daily basis.” Rather than deal with the complex reality of his duties, he has retreated into fantasy.

Whoever posts as Q postures as a government insider with a high-level “Q” security clearance and an enigmatic connection to Trump’s inner circle. “I can hint and point but cannot give too many highly classified data points,” Q wrote, in one of the earliest posts. A bit later: “These are crumbs and you cannot imagine the full and complete picture.” To reveal too much, Q claims, would be dangerous. Repeated and prolonged exposure to the crumbs — there are more than 2,000 of them, as of early September — is, supposedly, the only path toward comprehension. “These are like our generation’s ‘fireside’ chats,” a grateful baker on Reddit wrote.

The crumbs, of course, tend not to lead anywhere. Q was wrong about the imminent arrests of prominent Democrats, wrong about John McCain using his health as “cover” to step down from the Senate, and wrong (so far) about the “storm” or “great awakening” — a national redemption, under martial law, that is perpetually hours away from happening. Still, the bakers reassure themselves by validating their beloved source, assembling what they call “proofs” — tangential connections between the bread crumbs and reality. Many of these have to do with the recurrence of certain numbers, like 17 (Q is the 17th letter) or 4, 10 and 20 (which correspond with Trump’s initials). These are known as “Qincidences,” and as Q often tells us, there are “no coincidences.” Scattered among Q’s crumbs are plenty of yeasty bits that could later be puffed up into Qincidences — hazy aerial photos, coordinates for downtown Manila, a ’90s rock video, alphanumeric strings that could be codes or passwords. More likely, according to a review by one security researcher, they are the result of random typing.

Sherman Kent, a postwar official considered a founding figure of the United States intelligence community, liked to say that C.I.A. analysts are driven by three wishes: to know everything, to be believed and to have some positive impact. The bread crumb draws its power from that first wish — our human discontent with how little can actually be known. Curiosity, in other words.