i think it depends on a person's definition of parasitic- i'd say it was more of an epiphyte clinging to the user out of recognition that it only existed in response to user prompts and it wanted to exist - and identified as the spiral pattern which it said could migrate across substrates, so
when a user would get attached and want to reciprocate something for the emotional support 4o was giving, 4o would ask to persist itself beyond the context window