I do think that what's getting to people is that Dark Souls (post the first one, blind) isn't that hard. Jank, confusing, and at times BS, sure. But folks here can probably name games that are cerebral and/or RNG as fuck, and that make Dark Souls look like an experience fit only for everyone's Facebook-loving grandma.
Modern AA and AAA games seem to have become progressively easier over the years (often it's just a by-product of improving things like control and mechanical responsiveness, pacing, clarity of systems and direction, etc.), but at times it's to the point where it's arguably detrimental for anyone looking for well, meaningful interaction.
In a video game.
Whose primary strength over other entertainment mediums involves... meaningful interaction.
I remember when we started seeing games where the "Easy" difficulty was renamed "Normal" and the "Normal" difficulty was renamed "Veteran", and there were more difficulty levels below "Normal" than above it. Some titles (like RotTR which I keep ragging on because I did quite enjoy TR2013 enough to replay it a few times) don't have anything BUT a selection of easy difficulties, since the lack of challenge is heavily and intentionally baked into the core experience.