What we're seeing is an example of toxic fandom. "Fandom refers to a community of people who are passionate about something, whether it's a film, a band, a television show, a book, or a sports team.'" They find a sense of community and connection and get deeply involved.
This happens with all kinds of media--KPop, Marvel, Swifties, Naruto, and...sports teams.
Booktok creators became big hockey fans, or more specifically, hockey player fans. And their followers became hockey player fans, too, as well as fans of the creators. But when there are disagreements and passionate fans turn to infighting or to defending what they love, it becomes toxic. They are so invested in a particular work or person that they act out to “save” or “defend” it with online trolling and harassment, damaging it for everyone else.
Hockey fans themselves (not booktokkers) aren't immune to this. I belong to a lot of hockey fan groups and there is often infighting among the fans about who should be traded, why X is a terrible goalie, and how stupid the coach is. They're *passionate* about their team, sometimes to the point where I can't stomach it.
So these hockeybooktokkers who followed popular creators got upset when the creators thought they were being attacked by a player's wife. (See video below for an analysis of whether that really happened.) And they're unhappy that the Kraken unfollowed booktokkers and deleted booktok posts when the Kraken felt it had gotten out of hand. As they should have, when one of their team members and his wife felt uncomfortable about it.
Unfortunately this is causing damage to the entire booktok community and specifically hockey romance. I would hope that all of us are not judged on the actions of a few, but that's already happening, with a hockey romance author being trolled and attacked on her new release.
As authors, we love our "fans." We want them to be passionate about our work. We just want them to be respectful and compassionate to other readers, authors, and...well, everyone.