Feels like a lot of people — and especially young people — see disdain as a tool for social capital through distinction, and expression of admiration as a kind of vulnerable act. You can be better than something by expressing contempt for it, but to love something is to risk being mocked for failing to realise that it sucks.

Probably always was the case, but social media seems to have turned it into a science and amplified anxiety around it by attaching social credit scores to the dominant modes of interaction for a lot of people.