I feel like the villains weren’t awful (yes the rest of the writing was awful) but gearbox didn’t really commit to the bit hard enough. At the start of the game they were clearly being set up as vapid streamer culture twins but it never really escalated beyond that, instead of ticktock villains we just got villains who happen to use ticktock. It was like if upon reaching the city in BL2 Handsome Jack just continued being a corrupt CEO with a penchant for robots and didn’t spiral all the way into megolomania.