For me, it started when the last decent subreddit was banned. It took them years, but they finally got them all. Incidentally, it was a comment to the effect of "You don't have to be a biologist to know that women don't have dicks, you just have to be not retarded" that finally killed my account.
I like current events, and I want to see what normal people think about them, instead of just what extremely-online pedophile transvestites think about them. I find public participation keeps me sharp, but you need the freedom to say what you want without some fucking tranny dicking you around and running to the cocksuckers who run the internet to tattle on you.
I hung out on Voat for a while, but the people there are pants on head retarded and then that shut down too. I need a nice middle ground; I can't deal with people who think vaccines contain microchips any better than I can deal with people who think unfettered illegal immigration is somehow improving their quality of life. Poal.co is like Voat's direct replacement, but it's got the same idiot problem. I browse the .win boards too, but don't participate; that community is too small and skews too young. 4chan is too transient in nature; I like to come back to topics to see what else people are saying.
The Farms has many things that make it attractive to people like me: laissez-faire moderation, a do-it-yourself mentality, a critical mass of relatively smart and funny people to create new content, lots of people who are right-wing but not "QAnon will save us and we should be giving more to Israel" right wing. It's a natural fit. Ask yourself: where else would millenials who don't toe the lefty party line find an online community? Fucking nowhere, anymore.
That being said, I enjoy the Internet retards part too; it's like a TLC show that never ends.