It's bizzare and tragic that citation changed from "here's a pointer to where I got this information" to "here's a acknowledgement of who invented this" or "thi

It's bizzare and tragic that citation changed from "here's a pointer to where I got this information" to "here's a acknowledgement of who invented this" or "this must be true because this guy published it", and finally now into some perverse form of academic (crypto?-)currency where people pay each other in citations for use of labour or codes or results or facilities or friendship or just to try to extract some prestige.