This goes for other stuff as well, like if you're "ungrounded" by not actually observing/communicating with the thing you're judging, you can kind of just make up the perfect villain in your head and hate that

I guess same thing would go for extreme fears, like, you are so scared of something that you get even more scared of it because you know it's the scariest thing in the world, until you actually meet the thing you're scared of