TL;DR
Make the Reactions Anonymous. I believe the ability to see who reacted how to your posts/comments is what caused the actual "emotional distress."
I am well aware there is a separate, more detailed thread in progress created by AgentFenixion regarding "FUN/LOL".
However I do want to ask the community how would you guys feel about reverting the changes that were made, but making all the reactions ANONYMOUS.
Look, I understand the community agents and managers have all the rights to guide the Marvel Heroes forum in the direction that will benefit both the developers and the players as they see fit.
But in this day and age, especially assuming a lot of the forum users DO access the forum on mobile as well as PC/Mac, it is crucial that the users are allowed to "express" their opinions, whether positive or negative, with a quick push of a reaction button.
I also understand that, from a forum user's standpoint, it was entirely possible s/he felt like being "attacked" or "abused" by others who were throwing DISAGREES or LOLs at them without little to no explanation.
And I believe the single biggest reason why such behaviors were escalated, beyond control in some cases, was because you could actually SEE the names of people who disagreed or LOL'ed at you.
You could easily click or type that person's account name to check their profile and what type of reactions they gave out up to that point, or you could easily check the history of your own Disagrees/LOLs and see WHO marked those reactions on your comments/posts.
So why not just HIDE the user handles from the reactions, and leave the reaction buttons alone?
If anyone feels they are being attacked or trolled, because they are receiving extraordinary amount of DISAGREES or LOLs, or something just doesn't feel right, the community agents/managers will and should be able to investigate what's really going on by tracking / identifying the user whose reactions seem "fishy" or problematic.