There have always been rich people who flaunt their wealth and crave attention, just as there are those who are, as you say, the "millionaires next door". The difference is now, I can easily check in on the lives of the ones who crave attention anywhere in the world. We no longer have "local celebrities" like we used to, as their fame is rarely only covered by the local papers.
People always seem intrigued by the lives of the rich and famous, and tabloids have been milking that for generations. Before the internet, that was the best way to keep up to date on celebrity gossip, and it was a lucrative market (see also: MTV Cribs).
It just seems like the rich are so much worse these days because it's so easy for them to get attention. Some have even turned it into an art form, knowing how effective ragebait is at getting clicks. (Remember Logan Paul's Japanese forest video?) Combine that with the reduction in our media landscape and increase in outlets which just report on drama, many of which get reposted with only minor rewording on more general outlets, and it's much more difficult to escape this stuff today.
All this said, I would agree that the rich generally are worse today, but that's a byproduct of capital coalescing in new forms to lobby for awful laws spurring greater inequality, and it would have happened without the internet. They were also bad in the past, but unless you went out of your way, it was difficult to get a grasp on how wealth multiplies and the horrendous practices of many large corporations. The popularity contest becoming inescapable, on the other hand, is a direct result of our hyper-connected world.