I know this is a relatively old post but since the situation continues to evolve I wanted to throw a few alternative angles out there:

1. A lot of us have been defending this show to our friends for years now and taking a _lot_ of abuse for it (my ex, for example, took every opportunity to call out how much he hates R&M fans, always pitched for me to hear :( ). Now that R&M has become all the things they accused it of being, it's massively humiliating to be the jerk who insisted it was different and better.
2. A lot of reviewers are now twisting the knife, and the blogosphere is now doubling down on every accusation that they've levied since the show first aired, and now outright claiming that every last one of us is every last label they can throw at us. It doesn't help that the trollbots have gone into a feeding frenzy, frantically throwing every dark alt-culture dogwhistle they can into some of the conversations.

These are basically the same thing but from slightly different viewpoints.