You are right, Ripple fans can be very harsh, when called out for worshipping a dangerous centralized shitcoin. It's like a lot of denial is accumulated for Ripple fans because wo wants to support a centralized dangerous shitcoin like Ripple, which is also pushed by fake marketing strategies to take market capitalization away from BTC and ETH.
I would not consider someone who bought Ripple to care at all about the ideas behind Bitcoin or proper cryptocurrencies.
People are really gullible, yes. But it is our duty to share education of how Ripple is a dangerous, centralized shitcoin and should be avoided from an morale and investment perspective. Some people will share our views and change their opinion about Ripple, maybe won't touch it anytime soon again after we have shared our education of how dangerous Ripple really is.