I think you are witnessing the subtle lengths some people go to cause harm to others. Its very nuanced, a bit like watching the British MP Jacob Rees-Mogg or Sacha Baron-Cohen as Ali G or Little Britain.

Its the sort of tactics lawyers would use when cross examining witnesses or defendants.

So when you step back and see all of this going on in society, much of it, with an air of authority behind it, what you are witnessing is the very intellectual exploitation of the less fortunate. Such a human trait and the Germans have a word for some of these behaviours... Schadenfreude.