Why so much hate?

Tough Mudder attracts a completely different crowd than the endurance sport crowd.
Nothing wrong with that.

I just finished the Tough Mudder at Mount Snow in Vermont last weekend.
The people at my wife's gym convinced her to do it, and I said I'd go along.
My wife's idea of endurance training is running 1 mile around the gym parking lot.
One month before the race I tried to get her to do a small 5k in town, and her answer was "no its too hilly". The irony of a road 5k being too hilly when we were going to a ski area to do a 10 mile "event" was completely lost on her.

It was a piece of cake compared to triathlons. Walking 10 miles took a while by never got hard.
It was also lot of fun. There was a lot of teamwork between both the teams doing the race together, and even between total strangers.
My wife is on cloud 9 at having finished. She's never tried anything like this and is very proud of herself to have finished, as she should be.

Could it have been tough? Absolutely. If you tried to race, it would have been very difficult with the hills & terrain.
I really don't see the point in racing this solo, though.
Getting a group of fast friends together, and pushing the pace on the course I think would be a lot of fun and difficult as well.