Your tone is different but it feels like the same hand waving lumping together the general audience opinion based on assumptions of their consensus, then when it swings the other way circumstances make it all too speculative to say, I never said the fandom even should be validated as the feelings of the average audience member, it’s more like an undeniable echo, or a canary in the coal mine. But I’m not endorsing the hater narrative or kowtowing to the minority, just to say the less extreme feelings, the range within that overlap is meaningful to the deeper conversation, outside of fandom’s personal opinions and conclusions.

Again I could cite my own real world interactions with non fandom people but I don’t want to just speak from anecdotes which can also easily be discounted by nature of being an anecdote.