Are they not aware that their behaviour harms the overall fandom? Or are they so committed to self-satisfaction that they don't care? Or do they see themselves as an isolated outcrop, that their actions shouldn't affect the whole community?

From what I've seen, experienced, and even dared to ask about, some people are very uncomfortable with their own enjoyment of things perceived to be "for kids," and instead of just letting the proverbial inner child out to play and just accepting that it isn't a "grown-ass adult (usually man but not always)" thing to do but it's fine to do it anyway, they instead feel the urge to make it adult in the laziest way they know how: smearing it with cynical amounts of blood, gore, death, and SV.

Remember the Reddit-popularized fad of "what if wholesome family-friendly thing... but grimdark and edgy?" Maybe it hasn't gone fully away, but that was how a lot of emotionally constipated people tried to reach out to something they'd like if only they could get over their hangups about it being "not mature" or the like. The irony being that a lot of that cheap "maturity" seemed more like adolescent sensationalism and angst than an actual adult take on the material.

I think it's very possible to have an adult-friendly take on a originally-kid-intended setting and characters. Some of the very best kids shows and movies already do that by facing subjects like change, illness, death, and the like. I even saw a Charlie Brown special that was about a new girl in town that had lost her hair because she had cancer.

That's probably why I've always hated Gambo; its original marketing pitch was smug assholery about how "this is for grown-ups" and "isn't cookie cutter sunshine and rainbows" because it was like a sloppier Tolkien with a lot of blood, gore, shit, and SV in place of a satisfying throughline, or meaningful ending for that matter.

Pokemen had started with adult-friendly concepts and ideas in the subtext while not wallowing in them. I wish that stayed.