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It reminds me of the Louis C.K. incident in that he asked to do something most think is totally fine if the person wants to do it. But there is a norm about not asking people to do weird sexual things unless you have already broken that social barrier.
Redditors have oddly unusual but also weirdly consistent opinions. There was a post a few years ago where someone was asking if he did something wrong when he slept with a girl who was relying on him for a ride home. It sounded perfectly consensual to me, but no exaggeration, about 99% of the commenters were adamant he had raped her.
The hive mind is real. They often are in near universal agreement on opinions that are, at best, controversial in the real world, if not in the distinct minority.
Another element of this is that people don't understand how cut throat social social interaction is. On the surface, people seem nice, but deep down, they only really care about their social status. This is not just about enforcing rules so as to maximize everyone's well being. A huge amount of shaming behaviour is just opportunistic social climbing. Many rules exist only to give socially adept people the ability to rise in relative status. The rules that exist to enforce niceness are arbitrary in what they allow and don't allow and should never be generalized.
A common mistake young men make is that they see sympathy being given out to people for having problems, so they think their problems will give them sympathy, but the opposite happens. Being socially awkward in a way that gives people permission to attack you will result in them enthusiastically attacking you. It doesn't matter if you aren't causing people harm or are deserving of sympathy. If you have a non-protected character flaw, you will be published for it.
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