> They can mimic aspects of the look at the display layer, but they are fundamentally bogus.

The same could be said of a lot of retro themed games. They frequently do not adhere to the same requirement such as number of colours per attribute cell. Nevertheless, they are producing a style that they are aiming for.

But I agree that GenAI tends to suck at pixel art. It will be interesting to see how much that changes. More importantly poor quality art is still art, and frequently making poor art is the first step towards making great art. You don't have to like or applaud things you don't feel are very good. It is just not kind or useful to attack the artist.

>A poser will give, but not withstand (and internalize) critique. An artist is too busy producing or suffering to care.

This is my sense as well. The bulk of the aggressive behaviour seems to be coming from people whose identity values that they can produce things others cannot. Those who like just producing things are still just producing things.