(epistemic status: I am 100% projecting here. Maybe I'm broadly right though)

A person with an iron deficiency, will often have an urge to chew ice [1]. Ice does not have iron or help you absorb iron -- but brains are weird.

There are an awful lot of people who are lonely and want the sort of emotional and intellectual connection that they'd normally get comes from sitting by a fireside doing chores for hours. It takes effort and vulnerability to make friends with whom you can have 2-hours-long chats. It requires planning and intentionally-directing attention to maintain those relationships. Those who fail to plan and execute those actions will reach out in weird ways to try to meet that need. These will disproportionately be people who:

A. Struggle to sustain attention long enough to plan and execute what they really intend.

B. Fear that interactions with new people will end up with them assaulted, infected, or dead.

C. Feel trapped in some situation and unable to plan a way out.

D. Struggle to form an intellectual connection during opportunities for deep social interaction.

E. Have been in a situation where A-D was true and are falling into old habits.

I posit that the intellectual masturbation of people on twitter or other forums is a symptom of an unmet hunger for real intellectual connection with other humans.

[1] https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/iron-deficien...