EDIT: The way it ends up working on the forums is that if you do something to annoy someone that isn't against the rules, they can spend 10 bux and change your avatar to a photo of something that you don't want showing up on every post you make (and likely giant red text that says something like "Ask me about [something offensive]), and then you have to spend 5 bux to undo it.
Yup. Profiting directly from the drama. More drama? More money! At least in the short term. In the long term it just became a weird cliquey mess. I think that hurt their growth prospects as it put off potential new users. But those users just went to reddit anyways.. reddit consumed their entire audience in the end.
That's one way of looking at it. For someone who still loves that SA forums, reddit taking all of the low effort posters and 4chan taking all the racists/incels has been a real boon to the forums.
On rdrama.net you can buy awards with karma or money. These let you you ban a user, unban users, force them to include text in any comment ("Trans Lives matter") is a common one, or turn all of their text sideways.
This is hilarious