I think some of the hate stems from the fact you don’t have 22 episode seasons anymore. You could get away with dumb goofy ass shit like Quark pretending to be a woman or Belana Troi bringing Alexander into shitty holodeck programs or Janeway turning into a lizard, because ultimately it is just a drop in the barrel. When you’re only getting a handful of episodes a season, it stands out a lot more
You also need really convincing technobabble to try to make this concept work outside of it being a hallucination. Like the cartoon gag at the end of the Lower Decks crossover, they pass it off as psychoactive substances in the Orion liquor