Is it normal for someone to demand praise?

We recently had a new colleague at work (design firm). A couple of months in, her performance started going down and coming in late along with hundreds of excuses as to why. At the same time, she has made it known to everyone that she needs to be praised to function properly. She gets jealous if someone receives a "great job" and not her.

I don't know if that's normal. I've been working in the company for 7 years, and this is the first time that I encountered someone who demands to be praised. Literally. She even approached me and said "I need constant praise. I need that. I need to know I'm doing a good job."

So whenever she does something, everyone just says "nice" or "good work," just for the sake of saying it. An empty praise.

She also always says that she can take criticism. "I'm very good at taking criticism," she says. And when we criticize her work, she gets hurt and cries to someone about it.

But to her defense, she keeps saying "good job" or "I love your work" to everyone for the smallest little thing, even if the whole firm agrees that the work is substandard.

Is that normal for some people? Am I living as an introvert for so long that I've lost touch with how to deal with other human beings? Am I an asshole for thinking that it's stupid?