It's not fear, it's resentment: the old ways worked, and often worked quite well, and everyone has mostly settled on reasonable ways to work around where the old ways were broken; the new ways quite simply
don't work in ways that the old ones continue to work just fine, and we resent being forced to lose functionality we appreciate having.
Systemd does offer some nice functionality, but in return it makes certain unreasonable demands (.ini files everywhere, binary logs, systemd-{resolved,homedir,consoled,all-the-things}. Wayland does offer some nice functionality, but it is not ready for prime time yet. It is nowhere near ready for prime time yet. It cannot replace X11, because it utterly fails to replace key X11 functionality today.
Next year, or the year after, it might be different. It probably will be. I genuinely look forward to adopting Wayland when it upgrades X11. But I would utterly resent being forced to use it today, and I am very worried that I may soon be.