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He just threw out some bait, and the community swarmed like starving fish.

This is true of all "light" SO/SF posts. Nobody gets excited about answering someone's obscure apt-get question. Everyone gets excited when they can spend their boring workday telling some dude that his security consultant is fucking him. It's the same reason people read "People Magazine" instead of "Purely Functional Data Structures".

And he gains what, exactly, from doing this? Posting anonymously, he doesn't get any credit from posting the story.

It's called trolling. It's been done since there were bangs in people's email addresses.

The modern currency for trolls is "lulz".

And what would be the benefit?

it's funny