I first noticed it in the Hitchens “Hitchslap” videos in the mid 2000’s, but I imagine it started out earlier as that when I started following politics and a lot of the videos and those adjacent to them were reposts of cable news shows.
Were Socrates and Plato just the 4th century BC equivalent of them? That’s depressing if true.
That’s just YouTube speak. The implied drama gets them more clicks. It’s how to frame the ancient medium of public debate for millenials and genz. It’s like YouTubers pulling the dumbest, silliest possible face on the thumbnail. It’ll have more views too.
It’s also a sign of the times since Y2K that you couldn’t just have an enlightening discussion. Somebody has to get owned. Hitchens was forthright in his rhetoric but I never heard him be disrespectful. I’ve only ever seen him tracking the ball, not the players. But that’s boring so people add their own spice to it. And they tend to cut out any counter arguments if the footage was from a public debate.