It's not solely about grifting online, it's about the image of being an activist online. This has been a thing for quite a while from musicians who sing about wrecking the system while being signed on a major label and getting airplay, to Che Guevara shirts, to
that infamous $375 designer anarchist jacket. But it's also a thing with furries on Twitter as well.
I've known quite a few furries with loaded tech industry jobs or sometimes even defense contractor jobs who will sit on Twitter and whine about capitalism. They'll have enough money to buy nice luxury items that are non essential (or furry porn commissions) and live in an apartment in a city with a high cost of living, but they'll also rant and rave about capitalism despite capitalism being what enables their existence. My favorite contradiction I saw is when those tech industry furries were cheering when those who were actually anti establishment got ejected from the tech scene.
There's a troon furry out there who's an SRE at Google, a position that has some benefits including
your own personal @google.com domain email you can use to bully people online with along with higher wages than the average furry making money via grifting/art commissions/a McJob could dream of. This furry claims to be a communist, along with other typical buzzwords common among troons like being a witch or a mom as well.
It's all a facade. These people claim to be "communist" and whine about certain billionaires on Twitter but make more money than you ever will. The same goes with being a mom, they will never ever be a biological mom unless they adopt some kid. They absolutely love the image of it, so they'll pretend they're this and that.
I know one reason why femboys died off too. Everyone I knew online who called themselves that or who dabbled in crossdressing ended up coming out as transgender, and I know at least a few people who had female fursonas that did the same as well. None of these people were mentally stable anyhow, and some of saw taking the pills as a fix. There's definitely a pipeline, and that's why those people are so easily groomed by places like /r/traa or egg_irl.
Of course everyone I know who takes them talks about how great they are, in between bemoaning the side effects like losing body strength and complaining about how frustrating tasks that used to be simple are now.