Right. There have been folks getting paid for (and enjoying) being the center of attention since culture has existed. The entire concept of cinema comes from this. I wouldn't call Rowan Atkinson or Penn & Teller "attention whores or people who only want free shit" but they are the "influencers" of their time.
The dynamic has shifted, but I don't see it as some inherently bad thing, this just reads as a "kids bad!" kind of statement.
At this point I just feel like America deserves whatever happens to us. Our problem is obvious and won't be prevented. We have successfully completed the Roman Empire any% speedrun, it's time to pack it up before we get ourselves a Caligula.
I hold out hope that we can destroy and then rebuild ourselves, like how Germany has done for example. But those hopes aren't high and they're unlikely to come to fruition during my lifetime. We need to wipe the American political slate clean and start over from scratch but that's never ever going to happen until after the existing government literally collapses under its own weight. It will require the complete and total death of America as a nation, in order to save America as a nation. I wish luck to future generations. Me, I'm moving to Australia or Korea before it all hits the fan.