The point is normalization.

In places they don’t already own the news, their whole playbook has been to embrace, exaggerate, and extinguish. Making a mockery of it is the exaggerate part, and then a couple news cycles say more dumb shit to steal the limelight for the next news cycle.

By keeping the news flowing from one outrage to the next, communities can’t develop sufficient steam to hold them accountable, and each new outrage is only a little worse than the last.