My take is that the emperor metaphor isn’t accurate for Roam, that there’s legitimate usefulness and productive novelty in the new paradigm. There’s also a lot of bravado and hype, and some egregious missteps, which makes it hard for certain types (myself included) to really get behind it, but I’m paying attention and playing with it.
I think obsession with zettelkasten is a symptom of something larger: a frustration and sense of helplessness with how to work (and just be a decent human being) in a culture of chronic distraction. Look at what most folks zettel as their examples: books on productivity and self-improvement. Zettelkasten promises to organize, make things findable, make writing nearly effortless (just pull all these snippets together and the article’s practically written itself!), and on and on. It’s not a cure all, but nothing is. What I see when people get enamored with zettelkasten is a desire to control something that isn’t actually controllable (information) and to make easy something that is actually quite difficult (thinking, writing, etc.).
And I should mention that I say this with this hypocrisy and insight of someone who maintains a zettelkasten and is as obsessed by the shiny object as ever.