I ended up doing the same thing as Crime Dog and spammed the alert button after seeing a message. With your guidance, I restarted after that and completed the game. It had me thinking, so I enjoyed it (& you succeeded with your goal)!
I got stuck because I didn't know where to look for clues. I could look to the narrator/creator for clues, the hashes, the dialogue that was not the narrator, or the incoming messages. The first time I saw the messages in the hashes, I ended up ignoring them because I wanted to brute force the hash (not the smartest decision I've made). Having a fail state where either the hashes (early on) mention using the alert button or the narrator mentions "ignore the messages" or "stop distracting me; only alert me when you've found a match" could help those that get stuck.