Evolutionary biologist here, and peer review is generally brutal and more of an exercise in trying to find absolutely everything wrong with the paper so can't relate there, those comments feel way off. As for the rest, there are definitely more and more scam behaviour to attempt to churn out papers and even making up email addresses and trying to be chosen to peer review your own (maybe fake) paper. Until the funding and incentive structure for science changes, move away from grants and individual paper counts to well funded teamwork, unfortunately people will keep doing this. It doesn't excuse it, but it does explain it.