Indeed, for some nonfans, Ms. Hathaway seems to embody the archetypal high school drama geek who cannot turn off the eager, girlish persona, even away from the stage. “We love authenticity, that’s why we have a billion reality shows,” said Neal Gabler, an author of several best-selling books on Hollywood culture and history. “And here comes Anne Hathaway. Everything she does seems managed, calculated or rehearsed. Her inauthenticity — or the feeling of her inauthenticity — is now viral.”

Fine, write her up for misdemeanor phoniness. But when has that ever been a crime in Hollywood? But it does not end there.

“Why Do Women Hate Anne Hathaway (But Love Jennifer Lawrence)?” Ann Friedman asked on New York magazine’s fashion and women’s issues blog, The Cut. “We simply don’t find successful ‘perfect’ women all that likable,” she wrote, adding that women prefer sassy best-friend types like Jennifer Lawrence, with her Oscar-night podium stumbles and self-effacing jokes about Spanx and cheese steaks.

One might think that Ms. Hathaway would have an adoring fan base in the gay community — what with her outspoken support of gay rights, her star turns in “Brokeback Mountain” and “The Devil Wears Prada,” her fashion sophistication, a gay brother and her reported plans to play Judy Garland in a biopic. But gay people, too, have failed to embrace her, according to Derek Hartley, a talk-show host on SiriusXM’s gay issues channel, OutQ. “Anne Hathaway practically demands that we love her,” Mr. Hartley wrote. “I’ve seen less aggressive bids for our attention on Grindr.”

But what if the hatred is less about Ms. Hathaway and more about how social media has amplified the echo chamber of celebrity blogs, reducing cultural commentary to a series of innuendos, like high school gossip. That was suggested in a recent BuzzFeed thread on “Why Do People Hate Anne Hathaway.” Among the piercing insights offered (“She has a huge horse mouth”), the blog post offered this theory: “She brings people together in their hatred.”

P. M. Forni, a founder of the Civility Initiative at Johns Hopkins University, which focuses on manners and social behavior, agrees that piling on can be fun, in a perverse sort of way. “The sensation of belonging to a group of like-minded people activates the pleasure centers of the brain,” Dr. Forni said. “So at a certain point, something like what has happened to Ms. Hathaway acquired momentum, and people were willing and eager to be part of that momentum.”