I could speculate, it was partially because of that blog post. The more social nerds are encouraged to cast out the antisocial stinky ones. Instead of a whisper campaign, there's a social media ejection.
(Nerds in particular have been lured into fake socializing with fake friends on a discord or something. I've seen this where someone disappears and it's like "i dunno, maybe he got busy with life". None of their 'friends' really care if he's dead or not, because if he really did get "get busy", that is an indictment on them.)