When you are dealing with a loosely organized, populist movement, you hit it with a number of very charismatic leaders to become its public face. The illuminati drama club, for lack of a better phrase for this type of special warfare operator.
Then, you have them begin to diverge from each other and subdivide the movement. This exploits the tribal basis to our social patterns and sponsors argument/debate over coordination.
This is why Q is important to the strategy as a central touchstone to keep the movement largely coherent. Without Q - we would all be arguing with each other about which tribal leader is less wrong than the others, etc.
What they are effectively trying to do at the moment is not confuse anons - but to raise a counter-movement among the conspiracy-minded public. The rumor mill. They want to try and not just make Q look crazy - but to control the narrative among the public rumor mill and set unreasonable expectations among the excitable public so as to make us have to argue against a fake Q movement before those people can take the proverbial red pill.
The first rounds of coverage in the media were "good news." Publicity. Now comes the poisoned well we first drank sweet water from.