Attention economy websites cause otherwise normal people to start acting like reality TV show characters or politicians.

And due to survivorship bias, they make it look like you have to act like that in order to "win", but since it's a numbers game you end up with millions of would-be influencers doing the influencer routines and getting the influencer personality, which is... pretty insufferable in real life. But they're different worlds entirely.

Indeed. Really there’s no good option. Either you get screwed over by the attention economy and your family members become conspiracy theorists, or you give up and become a furry or something