Cryptonomicon is trash but will continued to be held up by Sci Fi snobs to signal their refined tastes. It's ever been so in the two decades since I suffered through it.
Personally, it's my favorite book of all time. I'm not a Sci Fi snob and rarely read the genre, so I'm not sure what the signaling is.
We're all allowed to like different things, and you shouldn't take that difference as commentary on your intelligence. I think an unemotional reading of this thread lacks condescension or insinuation.
What is your favorite SciFi novel? Maybe highlighting that will help see the difference in style preference. Personally, of the SciFi I've read, after Stephenson I liked Weir and the Altered Carbon series. There's another book that I think of all the time but don't recall the title or author - future dystopia where the USA has split into two countries - conservative middle America red states and liberal coastal states with strongly defended but crossable borders.
If this is what you're interpreting as people talking down to you / claiming that you're too dumb to understand a smart book, you may want to consider that it's a you being overly defensive thing. You're allowed to like what you like. If some people have been dicks to you about your taste, I don't see how that has anything to do with this book. Forget those people.