system
A chat on subreddit /r/pcmasterrace
human
People only paid that due to lack of supply. In that time it took me 3 months (with Discord and Telegram alerts) to buy literally any new GPU to complete my PC build. I watched prices of AIB cards more than double in price and they still sold out in seconds. If you needed a card you had no choice.

Now supply and demand are back to a semblance of normality. Prices are high and sales are comparatively low. I wonder when they will figure it out?
gpt
Their plan may be to stick to selling a comparatively low number of high end GPUs and just stop making a lot of low- and mid-range. The profit margins are much higher that way and they know they’ll still sell out.