People can be passionate about just about anything.  If you get a group of
people together on the internet to discuss movies, things will occasionally
get extremely heated and emotional.  If you get them together to discuss
cartoons, the same will happen.  If you get them together to discuss music,
it will happen.  It even goes in sub-groups--not only will people get
fanatical in arguing about their tastes in general, but even fans of a
specific kind of music will sometimes do this.  I happen to love the Allman
Brothers Band, for example, and I've been on a list to discuss their music
for a couple of years now.  Great list, great band, great fans, but have
been a number of fights breaking out over various issues. (Is Dickey Betts
as good a guitarist as either Warren Haynes or Duane?  Is it -really- the
Allman Brothers Band now that Duane is dead?  Has the band made anything
decent since 1972's EAT A PEACH?  How important was Chuck Leavell to the
band really?  Is the song RAMBLIN' MAN really a decent Allman Brothers
tune? And so on. Then there are the fights over bootlegs when someone
doesn't trade fairly, and so on.)

In other words, keep in mind that certain things are just endemic to the
online experience.  And those of us with the biggest mouths (and usually
the biggest egos--hmm, I don't know anyone like that, do I?  ;-) usually
dominate the discussions and don't know when to shut the hell up.  Which
also probably makes us fanatics by definition.

Somewhere I've lost the point I was trying to make except to just say, hey,
this happens in most online discussions, so don't get too down on it.  Just
keep doing your best to keep things on a rational plane and things are
likely to be okay.  (But there IS a reason I'm so anal about how I maintain
discussions on my lists.  Which some people don't enjoy at all because they
feel it's too confining.  Heheheh.  You can't please everyone.  ;-)