I am also using React as the "V in MVC". It is the most sensible way to use React. I also only use class components. My code is way simpler than React code these days. The only React concepts I need are props, state, and the lifecycle methods.
React was originally designed to be the "V in MVC". What happened then is the community took it in a different direction: specifically ReactRouter.
It's really a company/team culture thing. Either you end up grouped together with people who always chase the latest fads and cargocult their way to their promotions, or you end up with the "Justify everything" camp where anything new is shit on.
Ideally, you end up in a company/team that sits somewhere in the middle, faithfully evaluating the trade-offs of everything, and don't spend 60% of their time reading the latest news from blogs and social media.
Right. Anything other than the most popular way of doing things is "wrong" to them. That's how mistakes get established. This non-questioning attitude seems especially true among frontend developers.
React was originally designed to be the "V in MVC". What happened then is the community took it in a different direction: specifically ReactRouter.