I spent an inordinate amount of time on /pol/ around the 2016 election and when Wikileaks made the emails available I was among those hitting the random button to see what we could find. The authors of the paper did a great job in understanding a key feature; (vacuous) conspiraciy theories involve a lot of jumping to conclusions, and are all over the place (multi-domain). At the time there was so much momentum to find dirt on Hillary, that every silly comment seen through chan culture lenses became a zero-point energy engine, and suddenly we were swimming in mspaint.exe infographics pulled out of thin air.
I was never a believer though, but I did enjoy the shitstorm, and human trafficking is a real thing. I was disappointed that people was so fed up with the matter that Epstein's suicide was not a bigger deal with the general public.