Your first paragraph rings true to me: the complaints I’ve heard are basically those you mentioned.
My friends are mostly fairly contrarian late-twenties male engineering, computing science and math people. I think that apart from not enjoying Methods, they’re pretty much the usual LW demographic. That’s part of the reason I was surprised when they didn’t like Methods. There are lots of possible reasons for this (to me) surprising result. Maybe they thought I didn’t like it, and wanted to mirror that back. Maybe they’re a group already biased against LW. Maybe they actually just dislike the writing style. Who knows? If they don’t enjoy Eliezer’s writing style, then maybe LW is not a good place for them to hang out, so it doesn’t matter that it didn’t work as advertising on them.
Do you think that LW doesn’t need other methods of marketing?
I’ve had mostly negative reactions to Methods of Rationality from 20-something males (and a few females) who are nerdy and geeky and mostly already like GEB, so I agree that this community needs other methods of marketing.