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These sorts of people have been around forever.

They have been. But in the old times such behavior would quickly get you labelled as a village slut and become avoided by most people.

But in the social media age companies need such people to generate content that drives engagement, and serves a a conduit for ads. This creates incentives for such destructive behavior, and forces such people into others' attention spans, reinforcing the loop.

I think it was also just harder to do at scale.

In the aftermath of his death, we discovered that one of my great grandfathers had a whole other family a few villages over, and neither family knew of the other. Being logistically limited to just two groups probably helped make it "work".

Yes, but COVID and social media has put them on STEROIDS.

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