Personally, I have no experience with it—but I don't doubt that it exists for some people.
What I object to is people insisting that the "status thing" some people have going on with it is Apple's responsibility to fix by removing useful indicators of who's using what messaging services, or that Apple is deliberately and maliciously making people not using iMessage somehow look worse.
(On the other hand, I think there's a perfectly legitimate argument that Apple could and should open iMessage, and is choosing not to do so for relatively selfish reasons. I don't have a strong opinion on that one either way.)
What I object to is people insisting that the "status thing" some people have going on with it is Apple's responsibility to fix by removing useful indicators of who's using what messaging services, or that Apple is deliberately and maliciously making people not using iMessage somehow look worse.
(On the other hand, I think there's a perfectly legitimate argument that Apple could and should open iMessage, and is choosing not to do so for relatively selfish reasons. I don't have a strong opinion on that one either way.)