However, what I've seen in the discourse of several programmers that claim to prefer Zig is the assumption that Rust is "not really that big of a deal". There's a constant minimization of the advancements both the ownership system and the safety approach provide, and a lack of recognition for the fact that the language is a "game changer" in the industry.
Overall, this looks a lot like rationalization of an emotional choice, which for me is much more close to religious zealotry.
I think you have inadvertently worded this in a way that silently confirms what the parent poster was saying. But more generally, while I can't speak for the entirety of the Zig community, the people involved with Zig directly tend to be aware of Rust's strengths. The problem is that one of the reasons why Zig exists (and is having some level of success) is because some people just don't want to deal with abstraction-heavy code. Some people value simplicity over a complex language with a memory-safe subset.
And the value of simplicity is not just a matter of aesthetics. Simplicity is a defense against bugs, because memory safety is not the end goal, correctness is.
To quote Douglas Crockford: "If you say it hardly happens, it means it happens".
Instead of focusing on tradeoffs they chose to call others irresponsible.