I blame it on the rise in popularity of the internet over the last 10+ years. There were still plenty of sega fanboys during the dying days of the dreamcast, you just didn't hear about it because they couldn't gather at a place where the world could see and hear their opinions. Actually, any sega platform over the last 15 years can fall under that umbrella.
Internet has two things going for it:
1) World wide audience
2) Anonymity
Plus there's also trolls that make senseless comments just to cause a reaction.