Johnsmeyer’s art was in that balance between plausibility and lunacy — he’d let the absurdity build in layers, so that by the time it tipped over into the completely deranged, you were already invested. And he didn’t rush the payoff; he’d let mid-level posters burn themselves out with “lol obvious troll” posts while he kept feeding the thread with deadpan elaborations.

The real magic was that the “reveal” wasn’t even the point. Sometimes the escalation was so smooth that there wasn’t a single reveal, just a gradual realization that you were in a completely different conversation than the one you thought you’d started.

That’s why his stuff still gets remembered.It wasn’t low-effort bait, it was long-form surrealist theatre disguised as a forum thread.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760915&forum_id=2#49173264)