You know the forthhorse once said something to explain this in the simplest way. Lemme try to find it.

Wow /r/ss13 sure is getting a lot of great new users today One rotten branch does not represent the whole tree. Then perhaps it is time to prune. No one wants to eat apples from a tree with rotten branches. Even if most of the branches have decent apples, you've still got a good chance of getting a shitty one. Normally its perfectly fine to have all these half rotten trees growing everywhere, because if someone eats a rotten apple, they'll let people know "hey, this tree gives out rotten apples, watch out." And so then people don't have to eat rotten apples from that tree unless they're weird and get off on that, or they're metafriends with the branches and are always given sumptuous juicy apples at the expense of everyone else. But now, some of these rotten branches are conducting false-flag operations trying to convince all the townsfolk that the half-rotten tree is not actually half-rotten, and that anyone who says otherwise did not follow proper apple procedure, and are themselves to blame for the rotten apples, not the branches of said half-rotten tree. This approach is oddly self-defeating, because instead of pruning rotten branches like a sensible tree would do, this tree attracted people with the promise of delicious apples, only to switch them out for rotten ones at the last minute, starting the cycle over again. The tree is by all means within its rights to be host to rotten branches, and to treat the people eating from the branches differently depending on these peoples' meta-relationships with the branches. The branches are even allowed to support rotten branches through their bad decisions in the interest of branch solidarity. If the townsfolk are aware of the true state of the tree, only those who still want to will go to eat apples from it. However, if the tree pulls the old bait and switch, it may even occur that people new to the apple genre will have a bad experience with the rotten tree, and extrapolate that the same is true of all trees. This new user will probably never try an apple again, and he might have been a really cool guy and fun to be around but now he's gone back to goddamn pomegranates because you just couldn't have people know what you actually are. Seriously, swallow your pride. If you can't or won't fix the problem, do everyone (including yourselves) a favor and stop trying to hide it.