I just think there is some mental disconnect with how org mode is represented and discussed on hn, and those discussions almost all seem to miss the majority of org mode abilities that absolutely depend on living in the style of environment that emacs provides.

Honestly, part of it may be just baiting people :). The plaintext markup parts of Org Mode format are really just a Markdown equivalent; the true value comes from the features provided by Org Mode the application itself, and most of these are what they are precisely because of Emacs environment.

These days, with new Emacs users the story usually is "Come for Org Mode and/or Magit, stay for life"; personally, I love to encourage people to take that first step :).