A lot of things that are cringe are specifically that way because they violate a socially-maintained taboo. Overcoming the taboos against these sorts of actions and these sorts of topics is precisely what we should be doing.
The fact that it is cringey is exactly the reason I am going to participate
I think two completely different hypotheses for this phenomenon are more likely:
Hypothesis #1: It can be a dog whistle between investors that an entrepreneur will "stop at nothing to succeed" which can include borderline unethical behavior. Investors may prefer to invest in companies that act in this way, but the investors don't want to overtly condone unethical behavior and instead use coded language to avoid personal liability. The poster child of this is probably Travis Kalanick, the CEO of Uber who reportedly had no problems with booking...
FWIW, I very much wanted to adjust my investments based on the covid news, but was stopped from doing so mainly via friction:
1. I made recent profits from my stocks, so selling them (even for a short window) would have had bad capital gains repercussions for me... in the US it's a PITA to deleverage stocks that are in the green.
2. I'm not enough of a trading wonk to feel comfortable buying puts, and the little in the past that I've played around with those tools seemed to indicate that it's hard for a non-professional to avoid excessive...
The day that doctors in my area post stuff on social media about performing procedures with plastic bags over their heads (like this: https://twitter.com/rekhakuttikat/status/1240768592880132096) I'll donate my masks to a hospital.
If that doesn't happen and we pass the peak of the illness, I think the masks should instead go to the spouses of people in my neighborhood who have symptoms.
Problem: Sick or elderly neighbors who can't get groceries and don't know anyone in the neighborhood to ask for help.
Solution: We put fliers into all the mailboxes in our neighborhood just this evening, giving people our phone numbers and an online group we're managing so that we can coordinate future grocery store runs (and other support activities)
To be fair, the tuned models are arguably the most dangerous models, since they are more easily guided towards specific objectives. The fact that they release tuned models, on which the safety measures can be removed, is particularly egregious.
Though your overall point is a valid one.