I completely agree with you. The tools that have survived throughout the decades, probably has done so because they have been proven useful.

The wave of hot takes on why you shouldn't use established tools are really a weird phenomena though. I feel like it's often just people trying to come up with click-baity articles – since so much has been said on why personas (or whatever they might be bashing) are useful, the easy route to generate an intersting headline is to just find a flaw of the method and blow it out of proportion, letting people know that that specific flaw is not only making you do a worse job, but also ruining your muffins in the oven, making your skin dry and making America less great.

Or whatever.