>>461134068A few different things:
1. The rise of social media making the internet thoroughly mainstream across the globe, which eventually leaked through to 4chan.
2. A surge of mobile posters who are disincentivized from making or reading high-quality posts, leading to an overall decrease in discussion quality. Most threads are basically clickbait. The ease of ban evasion has led to an entrenched batch of chronic low-effort shitposters.
3. Really horrible moderation and poor site management, that makes moot look like a benevolent steward. Every mod has a wildly different interpretation of the rules, and the clique circlejerk prevents any accountability or reform.
4. A large group of people that have made Wojak and Pepe part of their fundamental identity. They consider any criticism of those memes as an attack on them personally. Unlike memes of old, people cannot "move on" from Pepe and Wojak and want to keep them alive indefinitely, no matter how saturated and stale they become.
5. The proliferation of irony culture which rejects sincerity in favor of "pretending" to be retarded in order to protect oneself from criticism or growth.
6. Widespread distrust of public institutions as a result of mass incompetence and decades of sabotage.
7. The CIA (probably, they funded modern art).
