I think there are several factors influencing when someone feel ‘bloat’. There’s the ‘purists’ that tend to optimize their system to be as ‘lean & mean’ as possible - relentlessly, and there’s the simplists that just want a simple setup/dashbord they can control - without too many options/distractions from info-bloat. Info-bloat hints to different types of bloat: filesize, dependencies, gfx details/animations, option-bloat, monetization-bloat and so on. There may also be cultural tendencies within different distro communities gentoo, tendencies from those with the emacs syndrome, or other more political groupings…
The last factor I can imagine atmo is that the level of hardware is very important and low end operators will tend to see more bloat when things run slowly - no matter their ‘bloat focus’.
I had some Pythoncode for you but couldnt get the codeblock to play along 🙃