I think there's plenty of people who the internet or gossip circles hate where that hate is unjustified. At the same time, a lot of the worst people are initially quite personally charming and keep that face even as they screw you over. And I think when people come into contact that they've only heard about in gossip in person, there's quite often an attempt to be like "well that's the caricature of Larry Ellison, maybe he's not actually that bad". Face to face contact can weight quite heavily compared to "people on the internet".

Combine the two of them and you get a recipe for people to give Larry Ellison the benefit of the doubt, taking a "well we're adults, let's handle this more maturely than immediately doubting our counter party" stance, even as people who by their own accounts had heard otherwise. Ultimately in this case, Cantrill's experience proved "the internet" right, but I think even that might not prevent someone else repeating the same situation in the future.