To me it seems more like what happens in the furry fandom, where when one of them gets caught on camera in the news doing something embarrassing or illegal, the rest of them immediately freak out, turn against them, and try to distance the community as far from that person as possible by any means necessary. It's a rather sad source of drama in that fandom, and, sadly, is a major source of entertainment for SA goons and anyone else who likes to pick on insecure nerds. Really though, as you said, they just shouldn't care.