The absolute worst trend in writing is the now standard “thank you to xyz for reading drafts”

It’s a thinly veiled status arb opposed to letting the writing stand on its own

There is no reason to publicly thank a friend for spending 15 minutes marking up your draft. This type of thing is baked into friendship

It costs you nothing and they get status.

It’s usually the inverse relationship though. The online writing equivalent of name dropping

Which is fine in making connections but not when it’s used in lieu of one’s work

This is no different than an engineer publishing a repo and thanking Linus for reviewing. Does the code work?

Strauss and Orwell never did this. A uniquely online phenomenon

Which happens all the time IRL?

Status seeking monkeys going to status