Yes, the link explains why some people may be obsessed by some ideas -- because they generate feeling of status in their heads. Now other question is why this idea instead of some other idea. For example, you are looking for a "bad guy" whose reputation you can smash online, thus generating heroic feelings in yourself... so, from all the available options, why choose cryonics?

Well, I guess it is somehow similar to the previous "bad guys", so whatever enemy-detection algorithm chose them, it also chose cryonics.

atheists... video game fans... cryonicists... -- complete the pattern

What do these have in common?

• They are groups of people considered weird by most of the society.
• They are predominantly male groups (which may be merely a consequence of the previous fact, but it takes 0.1 second to spin it as sexism).
• Those people care about their group strongly, but outsiders do not empathise with them.

For a clickbait website, this is a perfect target. All they have to do is write: "Your way of life makes you hate women, therefore your way of life should be regulated by well-meaning outsiders. What is our proof for this? We have found this one women who feels uncomfortable with you. And since you have a minority of women, it must be a general rule. Now stop resisting and start obeying your new overlords!"

Well, for me the interesting question here is who are the next likely targets. Who else fits this pattern? Can we recognize them before they are attacked? And assuming we care about them, can we use this knowledge to somehow protect them?

My suspicion is that "rationalist" and "effective altruists" do fit this pattern; they were just not given sufficiently high priority yet. It may depend on how large wave of hate the attack on cryonicists can generate. (There is always a risk of choosing too weird group, so the outsiders will be too indifferent to join the wave.)

Of course there is always the chance that I am pattern-matching here too much. My only defense is that we could use this model to generate predictions about who will be attacked next, and then see whether those predictions were right. (On the other hand, it also feels like doing homework for PZ Myers, so maybe this is not a good topic for a public debate.)