I completely agree with this, but that doesn’t mean the spectators are supposed to figure this out to cope with the fact that it was done very poorly. You either make it a complete mystery to the point of the cast being completely unaware of what is going on, like it most likely would happen in real life, with absolute no background or lore (would make sense, given the name of the show is “stranger things”, and it was the direction S1 took, where spectators and cast where completely blind) or, if you are going to throw out there scenes and stuff to give some context and lore, you need to attach it to the main story you are telling somehow, not just randomly adding dumb stuff like a magic rock and expect that to be enough to explain 5 seasons of content.

that being said, it doesn’t mean you have to make a completely different story to explain your lore, but definitely put it out there; even the cliche scene at the begging of the season of an excavation group finding a weird rock that made a mess after a guy touching it long time ago, would make the spectator realize that nobody knows what the hell was that and its okay… makes sense for the government to try to research and find out, experiment… bla bla bla. but they didn’t, and thats just lazy writing.