On the sickness of our community

That's probably a large part of the problem; claims that "LP is an asshole" are essentially unsubstantiated rumours that go around in circles among people who don't like systemd, or still haven't gotten over the problems PulseAudio caused them 5 years ago; people unfamiliar with systemd may first learn about it on forums where everybody accepts "LP is an asshole" as a basic premise, and so the meme spreads...

There are of course also pro-systemd trolls posting inflammatory comments and calling people "dinosaurs", but the systemd developers themselves aren't doing that or encouraging it.