I think all the focus on it is overblown, a hysterical overreaction to certain types of fans that you think reflect badly on the entire interest/subculture. I've been around long enough to see several waves of anime fandom establish themselves, as well as know first-hand what historically was popular. You could easily leverage the same complaints against rabid mecha (mostly Gundam, actually) fans by just replacing the word used and some descriptive traits. Doesn't change the fact that it's not really the series that're at fault there, it's the
fans. And just like the 'moe explosion' in recent years, think about when we had a surplus of mecha series, except no-one pronounced those as the death of the scene (to my knowledge, anyway - maybe they did, I came in on it a tad too late, when most of the mecha shows being made were playing the genre to almost satirical ridiculousness).
I saw some links to other posts in that article's comments. Notably
this one, which I tend to agree with more, but also because of one of the comments on that article:
The haet isn’t really directed at ‘moderates,’ who just enjoy what they see without making bold statements about a show’s greatness or whatever. However, casual fans who just happen to enjoy moe too in certain shows are treated as if they’re the malignant tumor as well.
The root of all this is the antipathy against the kind of fanboying that overvalues and overrates shows at the expense of other shows (i.e. people who would say Keion or Haruhi or Lucky Star are the greatest shows evar while their total experience of anime is quite limited to make such pronouncements: saw too few shows outside their pet genres, saw little to no Ghibli movies, little to no robot anime, little to none of well-regarded shows through the three plus decades of anime to qualify their statements).
In other words, the problem lies with the fandom's equivalent of hyperactive teeny-boppers, whether the shows directed to them are the animation world's analog of boy bands or not. There's a reason I can't stand all that Kingdom Hearts crap, and the above is largely the reason (that, and as I
phrased it on my own blog, "it was when Square decided to anally rape Final Fantasy with Scrooge McDuck's pimp cane"). On the other side, you also have
this article, which nicely subverts the criticism.
My point, I guess, is that the perception of 'moe' taking over everything and ruining anime/"it's a cancer" is only
truly relevant to a portion of the shows being produced, and to the fans that make it annoying for everyone else. Sort of like how you get 13-year-olds describing everything as 'epic' and using butchered textspeak in regular conversation (or at all, really). You know how fucking tired I am of hearing that kind of thing? The simple fact is, that such sentiment is not really directed at the language itself, but at those who don't know how to properly conduct themselves and construct meaningful thought processes.