The whole internet is like that. My colleagues at the work have less of it, but conversations are still dominated by half-knowledge, word of mouth, impressions. Basically, life experiences which you form from unreliable sources are being passed down as facts or something with great confidence in conversations. It is fun to listen to, they have a lot to talk about it, but everything they say are often as deep as you are presented with.
It is a trend among humans to have a very strong opinions over a subject which he/she never heard of. Never cared about, but God forbid if they are going to let it go. They will fight to the death, suddenly becoming experts over a random topic. Usually focusing on technicalities and arguing for the sake of arguing to the point of absurdity. I notice this in online spaces. Getting to know those people personally (well one person) only confirmed my suspicion. A person is a man-child. Undeveloped. Full of personal traumas. Have attitudes which you would expect a child to have. Like "It is my way or no way". All that rot is painted over by a thin layer of niceness, openness or whatever it is socially accepted as good.
I accept online space as more pure form of human expression. Here everyone can be themselves under a guise of anonymity and be emboldened by impersonal nature of the internet. What you are too timid to say face to face can freely be discussed online. Thus all the oppressed individuals come out with their feeling and their thoughts. Unsurprisingly, there isn't anything worthwhile in them vast majority of the time.
It is like alcohol in this regard. A very useful tool to probe someone. Booze will soften person's defenses and you might get glimpses into what he is hiding or what kind of person he really is.
When it comes to spiritual communities, the problem is that there is no go-to way to achieve gnosis. There is no manual for you to do X and achieve Y. That is the key problem as people can't gather necessary experience. Field is also deeply demanding (at least from me). In order to achieve something, I must spend my time, energy, make sacrifices. Getting results is never easy or straightforward and those results often are very subtle. A person can easily lack any concrete experiences and they will simply try to fake it.
This is where issues start. Our perspectives become inherently different with different expectations, values and experiences. For a person unable to achieve anything, he will read various stories and will get an idea how he should behave. He then would make various stories himself. His motivations often would be acceptance, feeling important, being special. A lot of sickly people get into this field, achieve nothing and then make up stories.
As for people being critical, well this is Dunning-Kruger effect in play. You tend to be the loudest when you know the least. The most harsh and aggressive critics of spiritualism are atheists. People who know the least tend to critique the most. People who get into spirituality tend to critique harshly everyone else who shares different perspective than their own.
As for your own experience, it is hard to say. Like a person suggested, you might be too sensitive. I for example love a good debate, but others crumble under the pressure. Other people tend to be unaware how they are perceived by others thus they tend to be generally toxic, but ultimately good willing people. Other times there is a clash of perspectives of what should be considered valuable. For example, if a person does drugs during rituals and I come criticizing this practice. The core foundation of this is that our values is different, because our goals and desires are aimed at different things. There is also a lot of incompetent people out there like you possibly implied with your comment. Wizard Forums before being hacked had a similar problem with jokers hijacking the site, posting rubbish and being a burden upon everyone else.
