"There is no such thing as bad publicity" Social media has enabled people to lean extra hard into this concept, aka engagement bait. You see it all the time now, Karens, HOA shenanigans, exposing cheating, data center construction, all kinds of things. Hell, there is a sub-category of people reacting to others videos of those things. Social media provides the audience, controversy increases audience engagement, audience engagement generates money. It's so easy to get people to engage that half of Facebook is nothing but AI genereated slop posts about comically unrealstic scenarios. The situation with Piper is a homerun as far generateing controversy and engagement, and thus money.