As good an explanation as any?

There's a feature on an anime news site where a long-suffering columnist answers questions submitted by fans. This week, the very first question was by someone lamenting how negative other anime fans seem all the time. The columnist extended on that to suggest that most online discussion of all media tends to skew negative, stating that it's easier to be negative than positive and that negativity gets attention. He then tried to cheer his answer up by saying that at conventions, fans come across as more cheerful, perhaps because they aren't anonymous.

The resonances with everything else were obvious, of course... even without the columnist making the throwaway comment that "at least" online anime fans are better than "say, hardcore Star Wars toy collectors". I did wonder myself if negativity can feed on itself (just as positivity might, of course), and contemplated potential negative comments by others about the people "out there" who enjoy things because they don't know any better. Even so, the discussion was oddly encouraging... which may have been the point, of course.