While not being the arbiter on bestowing the lolcow title, I still think dick isnt really a "true" lolcow. This is just an episode, everyone has an episode.
I think you're a little early in settling on that because this is *not* done, and Dick seems to harbor the kind of insecurity in which one has a real hard time ever expressing any form of genuine regret at all. Admitting any mistake in public, without making the punchline that you're this cool guy, is impossible for people like him. Its not a persona he has built, I think it's his personality.
People like that struggle with any kind of negativity, and so just letting the active negative conversation be here on the farms while he goes on with his life is insufferable to him. He is used to be able to talk people into getting his way, to be a snake as you say, and he is used to be able to select the people around him so that he can avoid conflict, now anons are on his ass, he can't leave the internet, and he has not been trained by life to ignore and endure negative attention at all, hence he finds himself stuck in this doomed juvenile crusade.
How would Jim handle some shit like that? Shutting up at first, no content for a while, living of plentiful savings, lightly maybe joke about whatever it is, testing the waters, and to appease the plebs that demand it, and he'd totally steer clear of the dramawhore-gutter leeches like Ralph who would have prodded him non-stop about it. Totally ready to take the hit, to throw juvenile obstinant pride away, and if some crap about Jim rendered it impossible for him to appear as a non-lolcow on the pillstream, so be it, he is prepared to jump ship. The very last thing he would have done, which is the thing Dick did, would be attempting to re-orchestrate the perceptions of anons on how to feel about shit. Actually attempting to theatrically deceive the audience into thinking that what Jesse has is not worth considering at all, using the means of screaming, insults, anything.
It really says something about how Dick, Gunt, and others view their fans, when they naturally assume the role of judge of things like that, what is and isn't cuck or funny. Dick actually thought that would work, to some degree, expecting it to not erode goodwill towards him or raise questions in the community, but for a significant number of people to go "yes, on reflection Dick is correct, those DMs are, on the contrary, not cucked simping *at all*, certainly not pathetic or of any note considering what Dick is about. In actuality it just displays the supreme virtue of Dick the overmale because of the chad numerical yield of vaginas."