> Oscar Wilde once wrote that “Each man kills the thing he loves”. I don’t know exactly what Wilde meant by that, but our collective attention and obsession, amplified by the speed and intensity of the internet & social media, tends to ruin the things we love: authors, musicians, restaurants, actors, beloved movies, vacation spots, artists, democracies, and even a tree that became too famous to live.

This is exactly true, and one of the more important reasons to use a pseudonym online and avoid social media. Any attention you get is at best short-lived, and at worst dangerous.

The tree is gone because someone out there is has internalized some disturbing feelings and he (because it's probably a male) is incapable of dealing with them in a productive way. You can replace tree for almost any deviant online behavior, which encourages the feelings without satisfying them.