Personally, I don't hate browns, I just feel that there are better options.
Having also used reds, blues, clears, and buckling spring, and having tested but not used full time blacks, greens, and ergo clears, I don't feel as though browns do anything particularly well. If you're looking for a loud switch, you have the option of blues or greens. If you're looking for linear, you have reds and blacks, which I personally can't stand. If you want tactile switches, the browns are much less tactile than clicky switches or clears, which have larger tactile bumps.
I can definitely still feel the tactility in a brown, not on a conscious level perhaps, but I don't get the same linear (and bad, IMO) feel that I get from the reds and blacks. But I definitely prefer more tactile switches, such as the greens and clears.
I think what it really comes down to is that people all look for different features in switches, and browns represent a switch that tries to find a middle ground between linear and tactile. This leads to people who like linear switches disliking it for not being linear enough (not a red), and people who love tactile switches disliking it for being too linear (not an ergo clear). Personally, I find that browns are tolerable in most cases, but give most people an idea of what they would change, and gives them an idea of what to look for in their next board.
That's a lot of words that hopefully have some useful information mixed into them somewhere.