Dear Menachem,
It depends what going crazy means. I have heard of those who had complaints about the first sichah and were opposed to the messianism as early as the Fifties. I can’t even talk about 1989 because I wasn’t born yet. The vehemence against Chabad has gone down the last decade in my circles. It does seem to me that very few non Lubavitchers ‘go crazy’ about what the Rebbe or random Lubavitchers say. If you go through the archives of this site, you will see that there aren’t that many Chabad haters. It’s it only a couple of posters per thread. There are more posters that just want an easy explanation for some of the Rebbe’s statements. These aren’t easy statements to clarify and they are not interested in all the Chassidus that is needed to understand these concepts in their proper context. So, it is good fodder for a bunch of long and pointless threads. The real life haters that I know, mostly are not interested in learning anything ever. They just want to reaffirm their stances even though they don’t know the foundational concepts of their own hashkafa.