It's a natural consequence of the Crisis in the Church. Before Vatican II, there was just the Catholic Church. You went to the Mass closest to you and that was that. What the local Bishop said was hardly relevant, even if he said what you thought to be the most inane and stupid things it wouldn't stop you going to Mass - why would it? The obligation would remain and the local Bishop's personal opinions wouldn't affect it or your experience of the Mass in any way.

But now with the Crisis there effectively is no united Church anymore. Just going to any old Catholic Church isn't good enough anymore. Now thanks to Vatican II and the Novus Ordo, people must look for the "Traditional Remnant" so to speak, the churches and priests that stay true to the Tridentine Mass and pre-Vatican II Church. But there's the issue, no one knows what the true "Traditional Remnant" is. There are dozens of groups of a handful of priests each with their own organisations, each organisation constantly splintering and condemning each other either for modernism, or feeneyism, or pelagianism, or sedevacantism, or whatever else. The SSPX has had multiple schisms, and each schism of the SSPX has had its own schism, and many Trad groups never came from the SSPX in the first place. Then you have Thuc line Bishops, etc. who make the issue even more confusing.

So now when a Trad looks for the "Traditional Remnant" closest to him, it isn't nearly so easy as looking for the closest Catholic Church. He's faced with a multitude of organisations and independent priests who all claim to be the Trad Remnant, all while attacking and discrediting each other. So what's a Trad to do? Well, he sees which group matches up closest with his own beliefs and opinions and goes for that. But then when that group changes its opinions or beliefs, suddenly his reason for going with them in the first place is brought into question. Did he make the right choice in the first place? Perhaps that other SSPX shoot-off was the actually the right option. It can be greatly confusing and distressing.

And that's why Trads focus too much on the personal opinions of Priests and Bishops, because really that's all they have to go on to know what Mass to go to. So people take it to the extreme and turn Priests into celebrities and Trad-forums into magazines, gossiping and slandering various Priests because they disagree on minutiae. It's a bad situation, but it's a natural consequence of the Crisis I think and a flaw that would affect any movement as fractured as the Trad one.

How is this constant splintering not the same as what happens in Protestantism?  The effects on the individual who continually finds himself pushed out is the same.  Take a side in a petty argument and shut out others, or find yourself alone.  I've been alone since All Saints Day, 2014 when I got pushed out of the last remaining option for Mass.  The strange thing is that I believe exactly what I believed for the nine years prior to my conversion from Protestant to Catholic.  It's just that now, nobody will have me!

I know, I know...arsenic in your tea, sugar in your gas tank.

But that analogy doesn't always apply. What about living in a given location? What city do you live in? Are the people there even 99.99% good? Somehow I doubt it.
Sounds to me like you're chug-a-lugg-ing a whole gallon of arsenic-contaminated tea!