Yep, and those of us who were hodlers of both sides were labelled fools and shills. You've got to be a special kind of cocky to think only one side of a contentious fork is valuable and that you can pick which side that is immediately after the fork. Clearly there are people who value each path. That's why it is contentious.
A contentious fork is something different. BCH was not launched as a result of a contentious fork, more like an altcoin with a shared tx history but with different parameters.
A major catalyst for BCH was segwit being forced down miners throats when less than the original threshold was in favor of it. BCH forked off to avoid segwit and increase blocksize. How is that not a contentious fork? BCH is arguably much close to the original bitcoin than the chain with the BTC symbol.
I'm not saying that BCH is the one true bitcoin or that it will surpass BTC in price. But there is no reason to think it doesn't have value. Of course, by now I should know that trying to be reasonable about the situation in here is about as productive as yelling into a hurricane.