As someone that hasn't gotten involved in threads about new games until recently, and being someone that didn't read many threads other than market threads, tech threads, or club threads I had been isolated from most of the negativity.
I see a recurring theme in all social media causing rancor: current events. Current events are always hotly debated. The need to be right is time sensitive. There are always debates in historical topics such "greatest of all time" arguments, but people usually aren't as hateful in them. This applies to not just politics and religion, but hobbies as well.
My opinion is everyone is wrong (myself included).
My outlook on everything sounds negative on the surface, but it's an outlook about learning. What am I missing from the point of view of the person I disagree with?
In the case of these forums the current events are new machines and how we spend our money. Economics in hobbies usually get very contentious.
So when it comes to these new machines, anyone that is being aggressive is wrong, because truth is not absolute. What is true to me is not necessarily true for someone else. People enjoy different things. This is easy to understand. What else though? Different businesses have different business models. Different regions have different economies. Different cultures have different accepted practices and rules.
Saying company X should do something because company Y does it is not an absolute truth because of those factors.
Without going into detail, there is currently an issue going on with a current pinball company that I don't agree with. I don't want to say I'm absolutely right about the issue, because there are too many things I don't know about the company's business strategies and financials. What I think should be done might bankrupt the company for all I know. I use this as an opportunity to learn more about the situation and make informed decisions for my benefit. The flip-side of this is a company should use feedback from social media to update strategies to protect themselves from internal weaknesses and external threats. If we disregard everything we disagree with, we will not grow more, ourselves.

The more I get involved with pinball the more I hear people in real life talk about how bad it is. As others have pointed out, pinside is what you make of it. I don't let other people determine how much I enjoy something, unless someone is purposely attacking me specifically. Even then, I don't mean just negative responses, but someone making a pattern out of harassing me.