The thing is as i see it personally, it is a combination of things. You kinda sound judgementallyish, yet at the same time i know more people who are like that and you pierce the veil of social media.

And there is a combination of stupid and going really really stupid and that is where the grey area is, some even go far showing really bad stuff just for attention or say even stupidier stuff that they are gender neutral or something.

I understand what you are going through, you see through the attention and everything else and it also annoys that others dont see it.

At this point you can always straight out talk to them about it, i mean they are friends of yours and you should be able to talk about everything with them specially if you have such a connection.
Maybe you find answers that you will not expect :D!

I hope this helped a bit ^^.