It's somewhat subconscious. You see someone do something that grabs your attention. You see this person getting attention as a positive.You want the same attention, so you mimic the traits that attract it. And the more people that do it, the more it grows an ingroup that you can feel safe belonging to. And actually these quirks aren't making them different, they're making them the same as other people who use the same quirks. Anyone who has ever seen a goth person and soon after began dressing goth themselves is doing the same thing.
That's called fashion.
It's really frustrating as it makes it that much harder for the people with the actual conditions or disorders, who already often have to face pervasive stigma and difficulty.
https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/conditions/munchausens-synd....
We have always played around with and manipulated these pathways in very casual ignorant ways to get whatever our 6 inch chimp brain needs.
But the difference today is the speed, scale and complete cluelessness with which the manipulation is happening.
Much like how a certain type of person will very strongly defend their musical preferences with various technical reasons, while discounting that it just happens to be what was popular when they were a teenager.
And regarding the music analogy: it's not about the person liking just the music from their formative years, it's that the music they're exposed to during those years has an outsized effect on their preferences going forward. If they pass an intuition check they'll eventually realize the _reason_ why they care so much about the specific technical details they do isn't because that music is inherently and objectively better, and if not then they'll spend the rest of their life complaining about how they just don't make 'em like that anymore.
Even as a kid I always found that a weird one.
Surely it doesn't take that long for people to notice that "who you are" changes with time?
Specially in modern times when you have contact with so many stories.
I can't imagine being so disconnected from how humans work as to not understand what's up here.
People enjoy the attention of other people- it's part of the drive to gain social position. Sometimes they develop pathological behaviour related to this drive. Particularly when self-awareness is low like in most teenagers and some non-neurotypical people.
They see everyone else who behaves acting like clown but they’re less socially aware of which clown like behavior they should broadcast.
They conflate acting and mockery.