It's called bait for a reason, and it's why most popular subreddits are not good places to hang out anymore.
Also points go up feels good.
This. There's a whole market for high-karma old Reddit accounts. If it has a comment history that makes it look like a real person is behind it, even better.
Buyers are usually companies looking to astroturf their product/service, or scammers.
Google "buy reddit account" and see how many results there are.
Second, it's to create fake accounts with real post histories so that they can be sold. There is a lot of strategies and work behind this approach.
Sold accounts then look "real", so when real people endorse product X on r/buyitforlife or AskReddit threads about "what product's quality has gone down?" it looks like actual people and not a targeted marketing effort.
Long stories also make for good consensus building by hammering points that are relevant to socio-political discussions. Like when the Woke was riding high during 2016-2018 there would be constant discussions in r/relationships, AskReddit, TwoXChromosomes, etc. about abuse, to keep people constantly talking and thinking about gender issues.
You can also create "tailing" or "follow-on" accounts that post replies to the obviously BS stories, including those that post "lol what a load of BS", as that builds their history, too, and you can steer opinion by having a few of those supporting shillbots make outrageous claims for (or against) the story, and then disprove them in ways that leads the audience into intellectual positions that the posters want.
You can sell your reddit account too for good money.
The counting subreddit has already had a bit of influence on the tokens.
No way a human being can be petty to this level