What happened to Emily is, in some sense, no puzzle. As the tech reporter Jesselyn Cook describes in her new book, The Quiet Damage: QAnon and the Destruction of the American Family, Emily (a pseudonym, like all the names Cook uses) tumbled deep into QAnon, a sprawling set of far-right conspiracy theories embraced by some 20 percent of Americans. At the center of this dark universe is “Q,” a mysterious online-forum poster claiming to be a government official in cahoots with Donald Trump; together, Q suggests, they’re working to defeat a diabolical echelon of global elites. QAnon posits that those powerful politicians and celebrities are abusing children—trafficking them for sex, eating them, harvesting their blood—and propagating the idea of COVID-19 (a myth, in this view) to harm everyday people with dangerous vaccines.