The old scholars directly caused this. People realized /dbs/ was a goldmine of attention and started creating thread personalities. The more annoying/prevalent your personality/gimmick was, the more attention and recognition you got. If you were super fucking annoying you got to be on the Wiki, which was basically a Hall of Fame (or shame) for posters. This created an arms race of who can be the most annoying autistic terminally online shitter. This led to all the famous guys like the warden, the B, Dubhanfag, the S, ect. Eventually those guys either got bored, people got bored of them, or couldn't keep up with other shitters and as such left. This leaves the current state of the threads where you're left with only the most committed, autistic, terminally online, and mentally ill shitters who are desperate for any and all attention.