Honestly, I think this opinion probably comes more from the focus in capitalist culture on adults spending every waking hour working, and that you can’t have hobbies only side-hustles, so adults can’t be in fandom because they should be working! So adults can’t have hobbies or do things for fun and if they are then they must have ulterior motives.
They’re intertwined. Protestant work ethic.
The focus on working all the time is to keep the person away from “sin” by having no free time.
This is where the phrase “idle hands are the devil’s plaything” comes from.
We’re taught if we’re not working we’re probably “sinning”.
This attitude is pervasive in western culture even in supposedly non religious settings.
And it is, of course, as you say, exploited and deliberately stimulated by the capitalist class who use the attitude it as a method to enslave the poor.
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