Since I've been going back and forth between the Tumblr cosplay community and our little corner of the interweb, I have a slightly different concern raised by these points. Most of the people there seem to actually believe the show is real, and whether that makes Syfy the bad guys for making it or the cosplay community the bad guys for believing it, it still speaks to the fact that this show is a bit of a mess. While I doubt the show will hurt, say, DragonCon, I do think there will be a lot of parents wondering what kind of mess their kid got caught up in.
Does any of that really matter in the long run? Do a few unreasonable parents warrant condemning the whole show? I don't know. All's I know is that I MST3K the crap out of the episodes with my friends and then come here and remember the cosplayers are all real people I'd like to meet one day, and that feels weird sometimes.