Lord of the memes

were mostly unfair criticism made in bad-faith.

Wrong color criticism, one can phrase it. Both in what you imply by "bad faith" and in the reason you do that, as it comes from a different pole of the society.

Only many of them were not that kind of complaints, so you only have your human social instincts to blame (and those who abuse those - it's similar to being scammed).

It's a bit like Disney played the "racist fans" card against those who didn't like their Star Wars movies. So even those people who said and say they loved them have mostly lost interest to Star Wars in that very period.

It became socially dirty to criticize those movies, but the amount of the "approving" fans who still left the fandom shows the real reception.