The key insight from the article:

“ In the short term, bringing a community together is harder than portraying yourself as a person who cares about bringing a community together. But the image can't last if that's all it is.”

Community mindedness cannot be performative. While I empathise with the realisation that some people are jerks and “that’s why we can’t have nice things”, it seems like some of the people putting up these trinket boxes are making it about themselves.