an important skill to cultivate in fandom (and in life) is the ability to tell the difference between somebody who is engaging in thoughtful criticism and somebody who wants to make themselves feel important by making you feel bad
the thing the latter kind of fans often do is position themselves as an authority on fandom topics, but their authority manifests almost entirely negatively, and they are defensive about maintaining that appearance of authority and presenting questions about it as a personal attack.
if anybody asks them why they are in a fandom that makes them so miserable, or why they engage with a canon that they don't even seem to like or take any joy from, they respond with "oh so now we have to love everything like unthinking idiots? we have to accept all the garbage given to us? we have to endure the way the writer/showrunner/company mistreats us? stop forcing your toxic positivity on everybody!"
a classic and obvious example from mdzs/cql fandom are the jiang cheng antis whose entire fandom experience is defined by aggressively hating a fictional character and berating other fans as morally bankrupt and delusional, and insisting to outlandish degrees that they understand the real meaning of how terrible the character is, and therefore the themes of the book/show, better than all the rest of the foolish, unthinking fans who lack their insight.
another classic and obvious example from kpop are the akgaes/solo fans, or the subset of fans obsessed with mistreatment narratives. a big part of this is always claiming to have special knowledge about real intentions or motivations, and they will state those claims in superior or self-pitying ways that sound like "oh i wish i could mindlessly love this the way you do. i wish i could be uncritical. but i can see the truth of how bad it is so i just can't. it's so unfair that i'm not allowed to love things, but that's my burden to bear."
that's two examples but these people exist in every fandom. they are the ones who make you earnestly wonder "why are you in a fandom that makes you so unhappy?" then you see how much engagement they get, how actively and completely they submerge themselves in the echo chamber they've created, and it makes sense.
the thing is, it's easy to shame people into feeling bad by claiming to know better, even if what you are saying is nonsense. that's a foundational principle of the internet. (and religion. and politics. and the worst kinds of online activism. etc.)
i don't even think most of these fans are doing it on purpose. i think negativity farms engagement, and people mistake engagement for connection, and lonely, miserable people desperately want connection. one way to achieve a pale facsimile of connection in fandom is for your primary mode of interaction to consist of preying on other people's anxiety about liking things that are bad or wrong or harmful.
