I find that people tends to do this more and more, the little smug sentence with "double entendre" that no one but they seems to get (i guess that's where dogwhistling came from, but usually those are obvious), and with nothing else.
Is it a superiority complex? Why does it seems more prevalent now than 10 years ago? Even back when forums were a thing and that people trolled the "PC vs Mac" boards, this smugness weren't as prevalent.
People should go back and see the "smug alert" South park episode to understand what they sound like to random observers.
It's more prevalent now because toxic social networks have eaten away at our collective civility (see meta-example below), and also, the contradictions of capitalism* are more apparent and requires ever-growing amounts of justification. See, growth is good!
(*To anyone who wants to reply with big akschually energy, call it crony capitalism or captured capitalism or financialization or whatever the fuck you want, I'm not having this stupid argument because it's quibbling over a technicality.)