"Haters", "Debunking": This is loaded language.
The past being seen as deficient is nothing but propaganda and prejudice. To quote Nicol谩s G贸mez D谩vila: "Our contemporaries denigrate the past so that they do not commit suicide out of shame and nostalgia."
An init successor should have been designed by someone capable -- not an inexperienced programmer like Poettering with a horrible track record.