I don't see it as particularly social media related. That's just the cheapest way to get attention these days. I recall Benjamin Franklin famously pushing paper around town in a wheelbarrow to seem like a hard working young printer:
> I sometimes brought home the paper I purchased at the stores thro' the streets on a wheelbarrow. Thus being esteemed an industrious, thriving young man, and paying duly for what I bought, the merchants who imported stationery solicited my custom
He went out of his way to get positive attention, and it worked.
> I sometimes brought home the paper I purchased at the stores thro' the streets on a wheelbarrow. Thus being esteemed an industrious, thriving young man, and paying duly for what I bought, the merchants who imported stationery solicited my custom
He went out of his way to get positive attention, and it worked.