That has less to do with React specifically, and more to do with how languages/tools/libraries generally gain adoption. React is at a point where there's still an emerging "early-adopter" community. Angular was like that a year ago (I distinctly recall the tone on HN to be similar to your impression of the current sentiment around React). Now Angular is starting to reach the mainstream (loosely defined), which means that now there is a trend of people pointing out flaws in Angular.
I don't know, I think the excitement around angular was because it made things easy, while the excitement around react is based on its simplicity of its model. It's a deeper thing than just being a shiny new thing imo.
I think you're absolutely right. People aren't used to dealing with the functional paradigm that React has introduced and it's interesting, and in many cases the benefits are immediately apparent and in others are only apparent over time (meaning, with direct use). With Angular, however, there was very little philosophical "newness" but a lot of immediate "wow" and the momentum from that was enough to carry it quite far (and rightfully so).
What's happening with React is different though, and happens only once in a very long while: engineering complexities that seem to have spun wildly out of control become radically simplified by something sitting right under your nose.
It's exciting. Congrats to all of those who have contributed to React.
My personal impression of Angular and its community is that it makes things organized and maintainable, not necessarily easy in the greedy sense of "I want to get this little app made as quick as humanly possible."
I wish I could see where you're coming from, but it doesn't seem simpler to me as compared to angular, just different. I need to read through the code for React like I did for Angular.
I wonder how true that will be given the simplicity of React. Ember and Angular and so big that it takes that long to find the things you don't like. Having said that, I like angular and react in very different ways.
Give it a year or so.