That’s what it is. A shibboleth. They’re broadcasting group affiliation. The fact that it grates on the outgroup is intentional. If it wasn’t costly to adopt it wouldn’t be as honest of a signal.

it's meant to convey a casual, laid back tone - it's not that big of a deal.

Like look at the sentence "it has felt to me like all threads of conversation have veered towards the extreme and indefensible." The casing actually conflicts with the tone of the sentence. It's not written like a casual text - if the sentence was "ppl talking about this are crazy" then sure, the casing would match the tone. But the stodgy sentence structure and use of more precise vocabulary like "veered" indicates that more effort has gone into this than the casing suggests.

Fair play if the author just wants to have a style like this. It's his prerogative to do so, just as anyone can choose to communicate exclusively in leetspeak, or use all caps everywhere, or write everything like script dialogue, whatever. Or if it's a tool to signal that he's part of an in-group with certain people who do the same, great. But he is sacrificing readability by ignoring conventions.

I agree with the sentiment too, or maybe I am getting old :P

Some people are being lazy, they will get less attention, ideally

The new generation of tiktok / podcast "independent journalists" is a serious issue / case of what you describe. They are many doing zero journalism and repeating propaganda, some paid by countries like Russia (i.e. Tim Pool and that whole crew that got caught and never face consequences)

fixed it for you! now it’s in a casual, laid back tone.