While i agree dotfiles aren't the best, i'm concerned about creating too many alternatives. Then we risk ending up in this situation: https://xkcd.com/927/
As someone who uses linux to get other tasks done, rather than as a hobby in itself, I would rather have an aesthetically sub-optimal standard than have no idea what's going on.
This isn't some kind of new stuff. I'm not quite sure how old the XDG BDS spec is, but it's been at least 15 years; and the broad notion of using ~/.config rather than dumping stuff directly into ~ is older still.
As someone who uses linux to get other tasks done, rather than as a hobby in itself, I would rather have an aesthetically sub-optimal standard than have no idea what's going on.