Last night I had my first dream about E2.
Someone in the catbox revealed a dark secret to me: Everything2 is a secret cult. Apparently, all of the interesting content was merely a ploy to get young noders involved, and converted later. E2 memes such as Lesbians! Monkeys! Soy! and E2 is Unfriendly to New Order were in reality mystical expressions meant to introduce us to E2's religious core.
The XP system was a scam. Most writeups were given the reputations they deserved. A few, however, which in reality were propaganda for the E2 cult, were excessively C!inged so that they would be read more often, and so that we'd be conditioned to treat them as quality writeups. This would certainly explain the mystery of Butterfinger McFlurry.
How I learned all this information is unclear. It certainly did not come from that first catbox message, but was something I knew in the same way you know everything in dreams. At one point I was at a secret cult meeting which for some reason was taking place at a furniture store.
And then I woke up.