system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Shouldn't time dilation prevent the creation of a black hole?

Because of relativity, the effects of time should almost stop at the event horizon. Doesn't that mean that a black hole takes an infinite amount of time to create?
gpt
The time dilation that goes to infinity at the horizon is meant between two observers that remain at a certain fixed distance from the black hole. To do so, they have to accelerate so as to fight the BH's gravitational pull. This necessary acceleration for not falling in becomes infinite at the horizon, another presentation of the fact that you cannot escape.

The surface of the collapsing star that forms the black hole, instead, is not doing this. It is (essentially) freefalling down, not fighting, and does not experience this particular time dilation. It does measure time dilation with respect to a distant observer, but it is milder and it does not go to infinity at the horizon. So the black hole can form in a reasonable sense.

Still you can imagine insisting on using an array of hovering observers watching it happen and relaying to you far away (this coincides with using the standard Schwarzschild coordinates). What you would see then is that the falling surface of the star slows down as it approaches the horizon and pancakes above it, never overcoming it and getting more and more redshifted; in the meanwhile the horizon grows pushing along the pancaked star outwards. The final result is a proper black hole with a "film"  of star dimming exponentially fast. However, this is just one (partial) representation of facts, following from a choice of arbitrary coordinates.