I wrote this six months ago, after a spat between gamers left a man dead at the hands of a SWAT team they'd called. "Passion" is a noxious euphemism for abuse in every fan community; that corporate sleight of hand has already hurt people. theverge.com/2018/1/2/16840…
What I wrote here applies to every fandom, in every medium. The internet is used as both sword and shield; a way to hurt people, *and* deny responsibility all at once. Given that fan culture revolves around fantasies, it's an even better fit. 
Fan cultures also encourage a kind of *aggrieved* entitlement; something happens you don't like in a game? A nerf to your class or your favourite gun? It's a personal attack. Ladytypes making games that prominently feature other ladytypes? It's an attack on your very identity.
Corporations--like, say, I dunno, Disney--tolerate this sort of thing because it commits people to the art, and makes them repeat customers; it moves product, puts butts in chairs, and ensures high sales in every tier of a vertically-integrated media empire.
But it comes at the cost of empowering the most vituperative fans. I proudly call myself a fan of games, comics, films, books and more, but I've never sent an abusive communique to anyone whose acting or role or writing or art I disliked.
Inevitably, the rejoinder will come, "that's what SJWs!!!!??? do all the time!" Sometimes, yes. The Steven Universe fan community has gotten pretty septic at times. It doesn't change my point. The dynamics of fandom encourage this as an expression of your very identity.
One of the ways out of this terrifying wilderness is for companies to stop encouraging people to personally identify with products. But, well, that'd require tearing down a major pillar of capitalism, and, well...
I should also add, because it needs to be said, that corporatised fandom was always ripe for exploitation by reactionaries. They walk in, go, "how do you do fellow gamers?" and enjoin them to lean into their identification with the product.
This was how "they took our jobs!" metamorphosed into something palatable to fandoms. It becomes "this woman/POC character is part of what's destroying what I love!" Blame the Other, blame the Outsider, they're taking away your identity (as a gamer, a Star Wars nerd, whatever).
Because these fandoms encourage a siege mentality, it's easy for malefactors to go into particularly young, white, male dominated groups in fandom and go "it's the *minorities* who are ruining everything for you, purge them!"
That thought form is then easily ported into right wing ideology ("I took the red pill, the world makes sense now!") because they can draw the connection between "Asian women are taking my toys" and "Muslims are taking our country," say. Aggrieved entitlement.
Corporations have tried to monetise the siege mentality, by the way. Because it's good business for them, good to sell the "forbidden" that someone wants to "take away from you." nbcnews.com/id/31125247/ns…
It's not hard for that to be channeled by outside agitators into focused hate against women, POC, and queer folks. This, indeed, is the story of the last five years.
It's easy to do. Toxic fandom is nostalgic, often promoting narratives of decline e.g. "Star Wars isn't what it used to be." And they always blame someone. But right wingers have seized on that, and directed that blame at disfavoured social groups.
Now the narrative isn't just "Star Wars is bad now," but "Star Wars is bad because feminists/SJWs/the blacks/the Asians and so on." It was an easy shift to engineer, and we're living with the consequences of it.
