The user [1] you've mentioned has 160 points being a poster of total four bland messages. This goes against a normal statistical distribution. And this gives away why they do it: the long-term aim is to cultivate voting rings to influence the narratives and rankings in the future. For now, this is only my theory but it may be a real monetization strategy for them.
I gather that you do not have showdead on. The account has a lot more posts than that, but most were flagged.
EDIT to correct: most are not [flagged], but [dead] anyway, so probably manual moderator action or an automated anti-bot measure.