[tarsius]

> So I wonder what marketing techniques they use to make people feel this way; the emotions are strong, and widely shared.

It's easy. 1) Listen to the fans when they suggest a feature even if it doesn't click when first hearing about it, but then approve upon the initial suggestion, turning it into something I myself would want to use too.

2) Ignore the haters except for telling them how to disable that one feature that is so abhorrent it makes the whole tool unusable:

  (with-eval-after-load 'git-rebase
    (setq auto-mode-alist
          (delete (cons git-rebase-filename-regexp 'git-rebase-mode)
                  auto-mode-alist)))

[tarsius]

Let me rephrase that: Give those that already love your project more of the same instead of wasting time on making those who think your approach is fundamentally misguided slightly less dissatisfied.