I live in NYC and know a handful of journalists and bloggers.
Basically all of them know each other well and hang out together from mainstream ones like NYT (this dude Jon Caramanica) to hipster media like Complex and Noisey/Vice and it's just that they're trying to one up each other on some "I was on it first" shyt.
I wouldn't say Young Thug's plant without concrete evidence but I definitely know that these guys are living in some isolated silo of their own blogger circle and don't 100% know or represent the 'real world' at all. I wouldn't be surprised if some industry exec found Young Thug and groomed him into a thugged out druggy southern gay version of Lil B, either.
Young Thug is basically ironic, hipster, tumblr rap.
The weirder and more outrageous they are, the more coverage they'll get from those guys.