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What I do see as a reflection of our changing society is everyone's hypersensitivity to nearly everythingI agree that society, including the Internet, has become too hypersensitive. To the point where a comment in (January) 2018 feigning ignorance of how things were in 2015 is taken at face value instead of rhetorically :).
edit: I think you are right though, that it probably was pranksters/drunken idiots. Someone who dropped it off claimed to have early-morning surveillance footage of it being attacked in a touristy part of town.
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20150804_Can_hitchBOT_be_s...
> The video was posted by Jesse Wellens, the Philadelphian who said he found the robot while driving around early Saturday. He said he held on to the robot for a couple of hours, then dropped it off on a bench on Second Street at Elfreth's Alley between 4:30 and 5 a.m. The footage shows a man kicking hitchBOT on the bench around 5:45 a.m., according to a date tag on the video. The assailant is wearing a No. 12 Eagles jersey, the number worn by Randall Cunningham.
My 2018 mindset pictured a "bot" as something that had some kind of autonomous movement/behavior but it was for all intents and purposes a box with a camera. I think Hitchbot's survival chances were extremely low if left unattended late at night near a bar scene, Philadelphia or elsewhere.