Wasn't the problem the high failure rate though, not the actual UX?

It was controversial for the very low travel even before the reliability issues started to crop up.

The desktop Magic Keyboard is about right for me. Less travel and pretty quiet. The butterfly keyboards were actually pretty loud.

Really, I think people see two things:

1. less reliable (probably true) 2. different (so hate it)

Like anyone else, I don't want less reliability. But the "different" in this case isn't at all bad--like you said, less travel. I don't need key travel once my nervous system has calibrated to the keyboard, and extra travel aggravates my RSI as well.

Not so silent, there's several comment threads that show up in every article about how they're the best thing ever. I disagree for multiple reasons, but that's tangental.

It’s been my experience that coworkers with butterfly keyboards either type nearly silently or incredibly loudly. I’m not sure it’s worth the trade off.

It was... okay until it failed... and then replacement also failed few months later.

If the keyboard ever worked when I needed it too maybe I would consider itr

have you actually used it?

Looks like that preference is enough to get you downvoted here :)