Again, I'm going to draw parallels with furries, through personal experience and second hand anecdote.

My first encounter with furries was around the turn of the century. I ended up playing on (and eventually adminning) a furry TFC server. A huge portion of the furs were young gay males. In retrospect, I think most of them weren't out. There wasn't much drama that I was exposed to, and they all seemed mostly normal, if you can RP as an anthropomorphic animal while playing TFC and still be normal.

I later started hanging out in paces that detested furries, and I couldn't figure out why. While a bunch are "lolcows" and were way too easily trolled, I didn't get the hate.

A few years ago, my then-employer hired a new guy that eventually became my boss. It turns out that he was a frequent player on that TFC server. He also dislike furries. Also, one of my coworkers was a gay fur. With fursuit. Fun times. We got to talking about it for a while, and my coworker mentioned something that you just echoed:

Most otherkin use their kintypes as a coping method

My coworker and boss and I talked occasionally about this specific thing. My coworker found that a whole big chunk of furs from our shared demographic came to the furry community specifically as a way to express being gay in a place where it was accepted.

I'm not sure how true it is, but it makes a lot of sense.

Now, back to otherkin. Go look up eighth grade syndrome, a slang term. Back? Good.

I'd guess that a lot of otherkin - a group known to be young - are following in the footsteps of furries. It's a way to escape from reality and become something else online in a group of supportive people, just taken to the nest absurd step of thinking that roleplay is reality. Now combine this with a supportive space turning into an echo chamber, and you get the soft targets in the otherkin community.

I'm not saying that they deserve it, or are asking for it, or that the trolling is justified.

Okay, no, calling them on thinking that they're literally ~=*DRAGONS*=~- or whatever is perfectly justified... just not in their space.