Some of it is that people have gotten in the habit of replying to themselves in long threads which doesn't really work right with the user interface on any of these sites under any conditions, but certainly not when somebody replies to what the OP thinks is the wrong toot.
And then some people just get pissed that somebody made a reply that didn't mirror them 100% and they post some image with angry text and the caption "... would you believe somebody posted this lame-ass reply within 15 minutes of my post?" (Don't most replies come pretty quickly?)
All these sites could use a dramatically better UI for showing the reply tree of a post but I think people have gotten downright nasty.