Half of the success of these altcoin projects is based on hype. The other half is on someone known in the space (not necessarily respected, just known) attaching their name to it to give it credibility. This particular fork is endorsed by people of dubious credibility.

I still don't understand how this is something that applies to BCH without applying to BTC. You could equally argue that both of them are based on hype and the opinions of big names.

Didn't Satoshi (before he disappeared) advocate for the BCH approach to scaling? That's a pretty respected name.