We rapidly gained a huge glut of users due to an exodus from 4chan.
Most of the people who came here from 4chan were part of that exodus, and were spazzing out because of shit that Moot did like blocking gamergate, and messing with /pol/.
And since Moot has always fucked with boards, and done shit like auto banning phrases/filtering words that get overused to the point that he notices and gets annoyed, the exodus was full of newfags outraged over nothing and who take themselves really seriously even though they don't know anything, and are complete tryhards.
And 8chan was basically immediately wrecked, the base was filled with shitposters who by their very nature are prone to getting their asses annihilated very frequently, and they've turned the site into pure garbage and ended up taking a format that is supposed to encourage freedom, and somehow managing to have far more hotpockets per popular board then 4chan has ever had.
Plus a whole bunch of bugs that make the site unwieldy, combined with the site being ran by e-beggars like Josh and Hotwheels that either went absentee, or displayed utter incompetence.