You are definitely not alone. This comes up whenever someone demos an immersive 360 video player. But, you are being picky. Arguing for hard-edged semantic barriers is possibly the greatest time waster on the internet. It would be more productive to say that immersive, 3-DOF display of mono, 360 video is really crappy VR. Similarly, a good Google Cardboard experience can at least be stereo, but the 3-DOF tracking is probably terrible, so it is also really crappy VR.

Unfortunately, the infancy of consumer VR will not mature instantly into excellent hardware and software production value for all users on day one. Instead, it will follow a power law curve like everything else does. In the mean time, the best we can do is try to remind the millions of people watching mono 360 videos on their terrible-tracking Cardboards that what they are seeing is really, really crappy VR.

I liken it to watching a cellphone video of a live concert on a cellphone. You are just barely watching a concert... And, if you've never been to one, you shouldn't assume you now know what going to an excellent concert is like.