You hear about the entitlement mentality "I'm a thruhiker and deserve special treatment." I guess they think rules don't apply to them.
It's not new although some veterans of trail towns and the current AT hiking scene will say it's gotten worse in the last few years. Robert Rubin's On the Beaten Path - An Appalachian Pilgrimage narrating his 1997 thruhike related how a thruhiker brought his dog inside a church hostel in VT in clear violation of the rules and then lied about it when caught. Rules didn't apply to him either.