I just scanned this thread here and haven't looked into it fully, but this is more evidence that there was an influx of shitposters/bounty spammers in roughly October 2017, and there seems to have been a big hack before then or some serious account sales as well as a lot of new members joining in order to spam for bounties.

This guy just got banned here (don't know what for yet), and he registered in Oct. 2017, and I've seen a few others like that.  Seems strange to me.  Anyway, I'm going to go back and read the OP here a bit closer.