As the title suggests, when did this happen? How?
In my humble opinion, chicken wings should be eaten with your hands. Almost, as savagely, as ribs. But when the hell did people start eating them with utensils? It just, seems wrong on so many levels.
That reasoning makes sense. We (kiwis) all use our fingers to eat battered fish, crabsticks, squid rings, battered sausage on a stick, etc etc but if you need a knife and fork for those anyway then putting it down for chips would be annoying.
That explains why a couple of the UK people in my life want plates for their fish, too. They probably want to use a knife on it, and doing that on newsprint is not a good idea.