My theory is that there was a perfect storm around 2015 where everyone and their dog was encouraged to learn to code, especially by going through a coding bootcamp where they were mainly taught Javascript and React. At the same time there was a general enthusiasm for Open-Source, and of using Github as a sort of alternative, better Linkedin in order to get your first job as a software engineer.
As a result lots of silly packages were created (and used !) by well-meaning junior developers, who were told that coding is very simple but also fraught with peril, so if they are serious then they better should use packages such as 'is-odd' which is clearly more professional than doing it yourself, cause it follows the DRY principle and also get updated test by lots of people, etc...