That’s pretty hilarious. 
Well, a lot of that is due to the difference in the way the word bullying is perceived now, vs. the way it was when I grew up. Back then, it was considered “it happens, the world is like that, you can’t avoid it entirely so learn to deal with it”. Which is kind of the EVE way. (With a couple key exceptions I will get to shortly.)
Nowadays bullying is widely considered a social evil to be eliminated as much as possible and controlled on the bullying side rather than on the victim side (“learn to deal with it”). Which is sort of the way EVE is heading (though not really).
One of the key exceptions here is the difference between “back in the day” when bullying was perceived to be the somewhat larger kid pushing the smaller kid onto the parking lot and teasing him. And the more recent bullying version, which is gang members extorting and recruiting from younger kids, and bully packs swarming and beating or even killing their targets.
Unfortunately the “rosy view” of bullying as just a simple playground problem to be sorted out among the kids was never really accurate, and just like domestic abuse, child abuse etc. was always a much bigger problem than people wanted to admit.
And it’s similar in EVE. RL bullying isn’t handled by teaching the smaller kid how to punch better, and EVE bullying isn’t handled by telling miners they should “grow teeth”. (Keeping in mind I’m well aware of and support the view that any serious player should learn all the many tactics for avoiding ganking. But most players aren’t “serious” players.)
Some of it is also because your phrase “yeah, me and the other PvP-enjoyers are hoping to turn more people on to PvP” is part of that “rosy, pretend the problem is just a little snag” view that ignores reality.
The reality isn’t “hey we’re turning players on to PvP with wardecs”. The reality is, and was proven to be, that a very small number of corporations made a massive practice out of wardeccing everybody and everything and it was driving players out of participating and out of the game.
That’s what happens when you put 3,000 wolves in fields with 20,000 sheep and let them run free. That’s simple ecosystems, not wishful or rosy thinking.
This, to my mind, is a bit of a cop-out. You don’t need everyone to agree. EVE only needs an environment where there is a rational life-cycle and career path for PVE, mixed PVE/PVP, and PvP-only players. This isn’t as impossible as everyone seems to think it is, but it certainly isn’t going to happen in an environment that requires an endless supply of fresh new sheep to keep the wolves fat and happy.
Everybody’s got a story and an anecdote. But anecdotes don’t translate well to mass behavior. People do what they do for the reasons they do them. As trite as that sounds, it translates to “if the incentive, risk and reward cycle isn’t working and semi-balanced, then the game will break”.
And in EVE, it isn’t balanced, never has been, and after the first 5-10 years of “exploring a new game world” (which is a rosy time for any large MMO), the game has just been getting progressively more and more broken.
Well this kind of ignores the fact that I just linked you an article from 2010 making all the same points I’m making here, and showing that the situation wasn’t really different back then. Also ignores that mobile games now make up almost half the market, or that more than three-quarters of all revenue comes from F2P games, or the kind of gaming explosion that saw Steam release 336 games in in 2010 vs. 10,696 in 2021.
This isn’t a “gamer mentality” change, or more accurately, it’s gamer mentality, changes in leisure time usage (2 hour chunks vs. 30 minute chunks) plus vastly more choice and options, plus the fact that far more of the cracks in EVE’s design show up after 2 decades than they did in the first 8 years.
EVE can’t survive on the model of endless sheep to feed the wolves. It can survive on a model that takes a more ecosystem based approach.