I had a similar issue. This is my tl;dr understanding now.

The thing to realize is that the view from outside shows the object falling in and getting dimmer and dimmer and more and more red shifted. You never actually see the object disappear.

From the viewpoint sitting on the object, you fall right through the event horizon and get turned into mush, pretty quickly.

So, black holes can be created as the matter can clearly fall past the event horizon and add to the black hole mass.