They didn't get this out of nowhere, though.
If it wasn't the detritus of Something Awful, odds are it's from both the Oldtaku and "Weird Japan" journo hijinks of the 2000s-2010s.
https://t.co/FQaEsQJY6Q
While otaku as a negative term and the moral panic against anime and manga have since faded away in Japan, embers of that BS still continue to be propagated by certain anitubers.
Case in point: Bonsai Pop, with a hefty dose of historical revisionism.
You're not wrong.
Worth noting that even THAT comes off as mild compared to the height of the moral panic against otaku in the wake of the Tsutomu Miyazaki murders.
With the older generations at the time feeling "vindicated" with their fears over the youth's "degeneracy."
"A special feature on the favorite anime of notorious criminals"—amazingly, it hasn't even been 10 years since this kind of biased magazine article was published in Japan. The history of otaku bashing is not a distant memory.