"Growth Hackers" use the internet as a tool with a complete disregard to the environment that exists. It's a cool tool for a job, the medium where it takes place (reddit, HN, email, FB, twitter) changes but the existing effort won't. Not everyone, unfortunately, views the internet or specific websites as a community. For them, reach numbers are important, and why wouldn't they be. It's not a community to them. They're pursuing ridiculous results and rewarded when they can say "I reached X amount of people through X tactic".