My optimized miner didn't hurt XMR much (we could argue this, of course, but I didn't see too much yelling). I think the difference was that Christian was public about his in an inflammatory way that made people really *feel* the inequity. It's tough when you know you're not getting what someone else is. With most currencies, you might suspect, but you don't *know* that you're behind. Because once the coins are on the exchange, it's all about the buyers and sellers. Perception absolutely is important.
I don't think it was just perception or Christian's attitude. For some reason non-advantaged miners on XMR were still able to successfully mine while a lot of people reported not being able to get anything with BBR. Maybe that is pools or maybe it is the relative difference in advantage (especially once at least modest optimizations started getting committed to the base XMR code), or the faster emission, or some combination of these, but something definitely seemed different about the mining position of the "little guy" for a while.
i´m sure it was about lack of patience to find a block in solo and the lack of pools in the beginning.
Please ask this people if they mine XMR at solo or at pool.