I think anon culture would have a much better rep if the communities enforced a 'no personal attacks' rule, but without that the legitimate discussion gets lost in all the viciousness and hate.

spnpermanon is SPN fandom's anon/hate meme, and it's members have spent a huge alot of time and effort trying to convince SPN fandom that it is not a hate meme. But it's creator, winterweathered, admitted not too long ago that she created it because she was attacking someone on another hate meme that got deleted, so she didn't have anywhere she could keep attacking people she hated without anyone knowing she was doing it. IOW, she specifically created it to be a hate meme, specifically because she wanted to attack people she didn't like without getting a reptuation because of it, and she and a lot of other people still use it exactly that way. There may be some interesting discussions there, but that doesn't remove the reason it exists or the all hate and lies that have been told about people there. Plus anyone who criticizes the comm while not cowering behind being anonymous becomes an avowed 'enemy,' has exaggerations and outright lies spread all over the community about them, and is harassed in their own journal and in the journals of their friends and in other communities. The fandom has never been great, but adding a permanent hate meme has it made so much worse, and I'm a nobody in the fandom so they don't even know who I am to attack me.

It reminds me of a video I saw with the creator of 4chan awhile ago. He spent 20 minutes talking about how wonderful 4chan is because people once used it to save a cat and to organize protests against scientology. However, when he was asked about the rampant child pornography and the site members who spent months or years harassing the parents of a child who had committed suicide, he just kept mumbling about how they'd saved a cat and fought scientology. He couldn't defend it, so he just pretended it doesn't exist. Anon culture in fandom keeps doing the same thing. Most of what they do can't be justified by anyone, so no one ever tries. They just find the discussions that are defensible and pretend the other stuff doesn't exist or that it is so rare it is not worth discussing, even though that is a huge part of what the communities exist for.

Believe it or not, it's possible to be disturbed by the lies and viciousness and bullying hate memes encourage even if you aren't personally a victim. Mind you, I think hate meme victims have a perfect right to criticize them and I think the idea that anyone who has been attacked or had lies spread about them on a hate meme has no right to be unhappy about it is a particularly stupid one, but trust me, there are plenty of people who have never been a victim, who don't even know anyone who has ever been a victim, of a hate meme who still find them disgusting.

I'm seeing in your post the same denial that the 4chan guy exhibited.

You are probably right, but that doesn't say anything good about so-called 'anon' memes. If they would die if they stopped being hate memes, that just says that nothing else that happens is important to people who use them. If hate is the whole point, defending them on other grounds is just a smoke screen.