It's all FDs fault though, they designed a playground with inconsequential rules where to survive a PvP encounter you can't design/setup a ship the way you want. It's the way of Most MMO's though, it's all down to the META.
Surviving a PVP encounter is very easy in almost any ship. It takes very little in the way of concessions to make yourself pretty well gank proof. By foregoing those concessions, you are taking a calculated risk. This is an important part of the gameplay. The gankers only ensure that the risk is present, otherwise the game would merely be an unrealistic flight simulator with no challenge.
PvPers who fight amongst themselves or pick equal or harder targets have my respect, all others...well nope.
These are the same people.
It's reductive to label people like this and try to make moralizing judgements based on the labels.
I've been to Colonia and back, I've indulged in all the scenic waypoints on the first leg of Distant Worlds at my own pace, explored a few nebulae and planetary nebulae, checked out various biological and geological sites that I discovered. Am I an explorer? No.
I've spent hours running the tunnels around stations in everything from unengineered sidewinder to G5 speed sidewinder to FDLs to the Vette. I've hooned through various installations, made up courses there or through planetary canyons and raced through them in a lightweight viper, hooned the SRV around and off of any obstacles I could find, even launching it out of planetary approach distance. Am I a racer? No.
I've spent the last 1500+ hours of game time focused on PVP. Am I a PVPer? Sure, the community would say so. But is that distinct from being a PVEer? The first few years of game time were all PVE. So the one doesn't really preclude the other.
I spent about 2 weeks ganking everyone in sight so I could have a nice fat bounty to offer my squadmates, brush off any insinuation that I was "lawful" and basically just see what it was like. Now I can give my squadmates advice on how to deal with it because I've been on both sides of that equation; advice that's freely offered to the community at large. Am I a ganker? By most peoples' definition, I guess so. Haven't ganked anyone in probably a year, and really only did it intently for a tiny fraction of my time in game, but according to the forums or reddit, that defines the totality of my experience. I even had one guy leave my squadron because he was so mortally offended. To me, that is ridiculous.
The way I see it, there are multiple types of gameplay you can try. I want to try them all, pretty much. At this point, I have, and I know what I enjoy. It's silly to moralize about any of it. Any so-called "noob" in an "easy kill" build can turn around and be an alt account of someone godly and wreck your day. That oft-heard refrain, "wait til I come back in my combat ship" may one day be backed up by the actual build and skills to give it merit. Any time you pull a stranger in game, you don't know what you're getting into. Sure, it's generally a roll in your favor. Sometimes, though, the Novice you pulled is named Walking Dead and you're in for a huge surprise. The ganker is never unwilling to take the risk. The griefer might be, but those are honestly very few and far between, overreacting carebears notwithstanding.