It's a self fulfilling conditioning that:

• you love something(or thought you love something if you read the follow points)
• you dedicate time to make it better, like building your own themepark or rollercoaster tycoon
• you are in the god view and have control over almost every aspect of the community
• you feel the need and urge to keep those people the visit your themepark happy and engaged
• the time and effort you put in(sunken cost) actually have value to the mods, but not the visitors
• if something bad is threaten to happen to the thing you cared about, you have similar if not stronger emotional response when the author killed your favorite character in the show you loved a lot.

It might be mentally closer to threaten to take away your loved dog/cat cause in reality you bonded with that identity but you don't actually own the sub.