Why do people hate Kotaku?

For that, you'll have to look at a much bigger picture. A quick, incomplete background overview: 1) Trust in games journalism has been waning since the Gamespot K&L Review scandal, plus the discovery of paid resort early review junkets for special reviewers. 2) The economic crisis hit all hobbies hard, but especially ones with heavy price tags. Less game companies buying ads, less traffic on websites, etc etc. 3) There had been a massive build-up of gaming news sites previous, due to projected unending high growth. Which didn't happen. 4) Bloggers and let-s plays were steering more and more people away from magazines.

Swirl that all together, and it smells of financial crisis. Which often means firing of anyone good (expensive) and replacing them with cheap college graduates, thus saving money in the short term, but leading to a steady decline of quality and eventually viewership. So, what's a games media outfit to do? Some in that situation begin using what's called in common lingo click-bait articles. Articles with sensationalist material, usually one-sided, pot-stirring, poorly researched or even outright fabricated. Which goes completely against journalistic integrity. But then, that's because the whole intent of such stories isn't to inform people about a news story, like a news article would - it's purpose is to draw as many clicks as possible. Because clicks = ad revenue.

In the media world, it's called being a tabloid. Kotaku is kind of the ringleader of the tabloid gaming press. So, thin on real gaming news, thick on whatever non-news sensationalist controversy is going on. And if nothing new and juicy is going on, make something up.

TL:DR - Kotaku is a tabloid, and lots of people don't like tabloids. But they usually fun to read, which is why they often have higher readership than regular news.

Politics. They're owned by Gawker, who also owns (among other things) Jezebel, Wonkette, and the Consumerist, among others, all relatively left-leaning sites of one flavor or another. People feel that that bleeds into Kotaku, so attack it. But because openly saying that their opposition to Kotaku is a dumb culture-war thing could spark a backlash, they try to come up with other arguments.

(Don't get me wrong, Kotaku is totally a bit tabloid-y, but so is most of the rest of the internet; the reason Kotaku in particular gets targeted is because of people with a political chip on their shoulder. I stick to Rock, Paper, Shotgun myself.)

i don't hate kotako i just avoid them because i've seen multiple examples of them just ripping off content without linking or crediting the source

About 6-7 years ago I once saw an article on Kotaku claiming they had proof, MGS4 was going to be on the 360. The proof the writer had came from his cousin's bestfriend's sister who worked in the mailroom at Microsoft. Apparently one day she saw the words "Metal Gear" on someone's computer as she walked by and that was enough for Kotaku to claim MGS4 was confirmed on the 360. I'd like to say the way they report on stories has improved since then. However a couple months ago one of their female writers wrote an article saying the game developer that was accused of rape was guilty because statistically speaking, false rape accusations falls within an acceptable margin of error to automatically assume every man that is accused of rape, is guilty of committing said rape. Yesterday an article was posted "Movie types we never want to see again". To sum it up, it came down to every blockbuster (both good or bad) falls into a movie type we never want to see again.

To top it off, the cherry on top, the Pièce de résistance if you will, is the completely asinine way their comment section works. First off all, if you don't get your comment in within the first couple minutes of an article being posted, noone will ever see it. The comments are displayed in the order in which they were posted. The first 4 or 5 comments are the ones with 100+ replies. So there's no point in clicking the "show more replies" button at the bottom. However, even if you do manage to get in a position to get your comment seen, chances are it still won't be. You see, they have this "pending approval" nonsense, meaning if you don't have enough people following you or at least 1 employee of the website, all of your comments are automatically hidden from view.

kotaku is infested with SJW nonsense these days, thats why

It's a rather easy answer: they're sensationalists, they are the equivalent of The Sun in UK or BILD in Germany, or similar tabloid, exaggerated non-news papers.
Here's a good example of what they usually do: Wrist-Slitting Doesn't Need To Be Glamorized

Although there is none of wrist-slitting in Kill La Kill. They just use an image that looks like it to spread their social justice "work" (and to gain clicks of course).

I would answer that question with a question: Why do people like Kotaku?
I, personally, try to avoid Kotaku. I value my time and, if I want some info about something that is informative, adequate and honest, then Kotaku is not a place for that (same with IGN and similar sites, but Kotaku is... well Kotaku).

Even if you completely ignore the gamergate issues, it wouldn't take a person long to realize they are nothing but sensationalist media. They're slow to report on anything relevant and drive viewership with baiting titles. You can read twenty articles and be lucky to find one that discusses the game being reviewed from a mechanical aspect. Ever since the whole "games are art" came into vogue, discussion by reviewers on the mechanics that can hurt the game are rarely laid out where as how a game has immediate and significant cultural impact is the topic of the day. Since most people turning to game reviews are there to get insight on the value of their purchasing investment as opposed to a course in sociology, it makes kotaku less than relevant to most aspects of the video game industry. In short, they have become a niche publication who write about societal impact versus actual gameplay.

For me, it's a combination of their sensationalist attitude, their aggressive pushing of ideologies, and the clear cut case of at least one instance of corruption with implications of a fair bit more.

Why would I support an organization that treats me like nothing more than an opportunity to get advertising revenue while simultaneously exploiting their position to try to tell me what I should be thinking about both gaming and non-gaming issues? Is commentary on anime and video games so scarce on the internet?

If I visit a video game journalism site I expect good video game journalism.
I don't care about Ashcraft's "JAPAN IS SO WACKY! HERE'S AN ARTICLE ABOUT WACKY JAPAN!", I don't care about the "This is an article on a video game site because it's a non-gamey thing that reminded me of that gaming thing" articles, etc.

From what I remember when I did visit Kotaku is that most of their video game articles felt more like blog posts. The site has articles titled "I spent an entire day wearing a sleeping bag because video games" and "I bet Kanya West uses Yoshi in Smash Bros". Is that honestly considered journalism?

They do? I don't know, I kind of like their Facebook news.

They are rather too tabloid for a lot of people's tastes.

Maybe it's a tabloid like everybody says, almost every morning I go to my fav news site then Kotaku.
I like their articles, writers, random japanese stuff and lovely cat pics

Because people find hard just to move on and read whatever they please, instead they prefer writing hate comments under every news for no particular reason.

Typical Kotaku:

Hey! A new article about Fallout, sweet! Let's check it out and see which Fallouts are better than the others and why!
http://kotaku.com/lets-rank-the-fallout-games-best-to-worst-611408965

--Open page, scroll right down to the first game in the list: --

"Okay, I'll admit it: this entry has a lot of personal significance for me—Fallout 2 altered how I viewed America and its politics, and it gave me a safe space to explore my sexual identity."

...

who is kotaku ? what is kotaku ?