Worldwide, particularly in places like Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, it's almost always done against women - it disfigures people and leaves them ugly, and people generally judge women more on appearance than they do for men. It's a very effective way of ruining a life, and has less harsh sentences and less logistical issues (re: a dead body) than murder.
In the UK, however, men make up most of the victims. It has become a preferred attack by some criminals as it is easy to conceal in a coffee cup or something, and police have clamped down massively on gangs using knives.
Acid attacks are way down from the peak in 2017, but unfortunately it still happens.
Corrosive substance is a much more accurate term than acid attack, and everyone knows what corrosive means. Most of these attacks don't actually use acid at all.
Not everything is a conspiracy.
And while 97 attacks (2022 number) in the London metropolitan area is indeed a tragedy, it's also an area of 15 million people. And that's not even counting the huge amount of visitors that it receives. It's really not as much of an issue as the 24hr news cycle makes out.
Is that the new lingo to try to frame this as a leftist conspiracy, when the usual "why won't they say what race he is??" doesn't work, cause they posted the suspect's name and photo?