@"A site that requires its users to be vacuous, shallow and egotistical"
In other words, its a site designed to appeal to Histrionic and Narcissistic people. (Histrionic (HPD) and Narcissistic (NPD) as in cluster B personality disorders). Hardly surprising then that the site ends up behaving in a Narcissistic way to arrogantly throw out 5000 and then uses that "news" to gain press attention, which is exactly the behavior of attention seeking Histrionic people.
For example, in the case of HPD (Histrionic Personality Disorder) their need for attention also manifests as a need to deprive others of attention, so they can regain the center of attention. In the case of NPD (Narcissistic personality disorder) their need for power over others also manifests as a need to deprive others of power, so they can regain the center of power over the majority of people around them.
Therefore these People are anything but Beautiful. They are arrogant self centered attention seekers. NPDs + HPDs. Sadly that makes them perfect candidates for reality TV which is why reality TV is so boring.
HPD is the result of a child growing up deprived of parental attention (mild patterns of this behavior are due to for example divorce and/or sibling rivalry competing for attention, whereas in extreme cases, its the result of parental neglect).
NPD is the result of a child growing up exposed to authoritarian control over them. (In extreme cases physical abuse). This kind of child grows up fearful of ever having someone gaining power over them ever again, the way they suffered as a child, so they fight to be the one with the power over others. Also as they have so little empathy towards others, they can also often use lies to manipulate and win over others, simply as to them, the ends justify their means. Worse still, they can even see their lies as good as it gives them power over others to allow them to manipulate other people.
So they are not role models, they are broken people. But then that is also why they aggressively and arrogantly try so hard to be seen as role models.