IMHO part and parcel with the general increase in skepticism/distrust the past few years. Hard for me to verbalize. Feels very similar to the feeling I get as soon as someone starts telling me about what "They" think and do.
Let me try verbalizing this: People's own motivations tend to distort their own perception of other people's motivations and whether people are motivated in a direction at all: we see it here simply as this person was probably estatic just to have the opportunity to write for the New Yorker, much less for a paycheck, yet the immediate comments at the time were focused on noting how they felt about, broadly, "cancelling", and assumed this was an instance of such.
My 3rd biggest passion is finding a way to disarm the Theys and guesses at motivation. I never, ever, can...the way I do it in my own personal life is being very upfront and active, possibly rudely so, in asking people if I'm unsure. Everyone's on twitter?