The Ruby community has been eating itself alive since almost the beginning, but it is sad to see the short-sighted destruction of trust and connection that this has had.
Predating the current hostile takeover: •••the vitriol directed at early critics like Zed Shaw •••mysterious departure of _why the lucky stiff •••the contentious Code of Conduct •••DHH •••uneasy truce after the toxic tribalism of the Rails vs. Merb
There's more, but the linked article can send you down more interesting rabbit holes than more bullets on my list
That said, the Rails vs Merb era was mostly good natured competition and I don't view the Rails vs Merb period as itself having been problematic.
Merb devs believed we could make app development both simple to start (as a single file like Sinatra) and easy to evolve (into a modular codebase with Rails-like conventions). Existing outside of the Rails ecosystem allowed Merb to pursue that distinct vision.
The Merge between Rails and Merb, accreted many of Merb's modular architectural enhancements to Rails, but sadly deprecated the overall Merb vision. To me that was a shame, but I still wouldn't describe any of it as toxic.