No, they're not dumb, they're most likely bad actors trying to raise fees permanently. 
Jokes aside, I didn't find any logical reason to increase the fee more and more when the recommended fee is way lower than what they have spent.
in january 2023 core changed its 'bump fee' default from 1s/vb to 5sat/vb for both GUI transacting default and RPC transacting default
they then in summer changed code whereby (not in GUI) in RPC if a user manually chooses a fee, then it ignores the bump fee default
meaning less techy users are pushed to pay more because the gui defaults to bump fees in higher increments than 1sat/vb, or 100sat/kb(0.1sat)
where as those that know how to rpc transact get more freedom to not pay as much
many alternative wallets also messed with their fee estimation defaults too
this is where you see some replacements bumped by 5s/vb increments (core gui created tx)
this is where you see some replacements bumped by 2s/vb increments (not-core gui created)
this is where you see some replacements bumped by many s/vb increments
for instance
both of the replacements were not done via cores gui interface
because both transactions were not replaced by rounded 5sat increment
eg the second tx would have been 1035 or 1040 not 1039
I noticed the same thing. Right now on electrum, The fee is going from 1 to 2, 2 to 5, 5 to 10, 10 to 20, 20 to 30, 30 to 50, 50 to 70, 70 to 100 sats... If I remember right, It used to be 1 to 2, 2 to 3 and so on. It feels like they did intentionally to increase the fees even more.
There is huge difference between 30 sats/b and 50 sats/b fee. Why can't I fine tune it?
This is becoming ridiculous.