i used to post on 4chan all the time. the hard to follow part was a feature. It let's you see only the good stuff in a way that's hard to explain, but I'll try.

The fun of 4chan is that everyone is full of shit. In fact, there posts about how much shit everyone else is full of. It's fun.

So how do you have fun on 4chan? It's easy. You lie. You're anonymous. It's consequence free.

It's been said that people like "bad jokes" because jokes split the room into two groups: those that get it and those that don't. A "bad joke" has a very forced punchline so that everyone gets the joke. There is no split in the room. Everyone hates the joke together.

A lie on 4chan splits the readership. Those that are ready to debunk anything. And those that "yes, and..."

The "bad lies" were no fun. Easy debunk, no one elaborating. The other lies were the fun ones.

The debunking group is the loudest, most numerous, and had tons of fun. There were infographics on how to tell if the user was pretending to be two different people ("samef--"). There were infographics on how to see photoshop artifacts. All kinds of good skeptical reasoning and debunking tools. The debunkers proved the liars lied.

The debunkers would share huge greentext png files of reformated text laying out how full of shit that all the liars are.

The other group had a different kind of fun. They found that if they see an obvious lie, they "yes, and...". That's an improv cliche that means you fully accept the OP's premise and develop it fuller yourself.

Wrestling fans would call it "kayfabe". Horror fiction on reddit has "nosleep" rules. It's in general, a willful supension of disbelief. These are "metarules" in a sense. They are rules saying it's against the rules to mention the rules.

Of course the yes-anders got debunked to hell and back. There are all kinds of greentext proving it.

But, the yes-anders shared greentext too. They had huge pngs full of undebunked truth. It was easy to do. It's all lies, and they are editing this huge png files. They just leave off an debunking.

Is it really that easy to just cut out the debunking? Wouldn't it just be easy to check?

HELL NO. That's the fucking point of 4chan.

Too difficult to follow conversations. My exposure has been 2nd hand by reddit or reformed text

It is IMPOSSIBLE to follow conversations. Everyone is only responding to what they came to see. There's no "I'll get back to that". You got to spew your shit while the shit is flying. Or you miss the fun.

This is where the debunkers always lose. There is just too much shit to debunk.

People reform the text into the png files I was mentioning. Put out a mountain of stuff. IGNORE ALL CONTRAPOINTS. And there are some people that believe them. When I said

I’m sure 99% of posts about pizzagate are LARPing really. (I think the same of Flat Earth. At least, way back when.)

I mean, they are the yes-anders. The people pretending to believe it because its fun to watch people try to debunk things when they never admit other, plausible explanations. I would have to say that the "99%" figure is an uneducated statement, so your guess is as good as mine.

But there are those that see this spread without any debunking because the debunking is lost. And anyone that tried was driven crazy by people pretending not to understand. So it's now an echo chamber of those that fell for it.

4chan was fun. I'm glad I quit.