For my shooting and with my eyesight red dots are worth it over iron sights. It’s easier for me to acquire a dot than it is for me to acquire iron sights (due to vision issues), and I can stay target focused in my shooting to a greater degree with a red dot, which I think is advantageous from a defensive standpoint. If Hackathorn thinks differently that’s fair and he certainly has experience, but it doesn’t change what works for me personally.
There are a number of people in the industry that endorse red dots, but I don’t want to go down the appeal to authority rabbit hole. Hackathorn makes an effort to flush out a number of points, but so do others on the other side of the argument. The cynic in me also wonders if the fact that this video is being posted on the channel of a manufacturer who, relative to the entire product line, doesn’t have a ton of red dot mounting options means this might be a way to deflect from that fact and boost or continue sales, and of course confirmation bias is a thing and their existing customers might like to hear they are right (the comments section of that video seems to back up this last part). But that could be my own confirmation bias popping up its head.
In terms of fads, that may be possible but if so it’s a fad that’s going to continue for years. In the firearms courses I take every year I have seen an explosion in the use of red dots, over a relatively short period of time. Red dots on pistols are now the norm when I take a course, rather than the exception, and even at the private range I go to that is becoming true as well. In the last pistol course I took 2 out of 12 people were running irons, and that has been true in other courses this year. I get that to many it seems like people want to be “cool”, and that’s what I thought initially as well. Once I put the time in on red dots and saw the benefits for me personally then I realized that many were doing this for meaningful reasons, not just to fit in with the crowd. Red dots on pistols continue to improve and decrease in price and unless some technology can come in and offer the same benefits, I don’t see people eschewing that technology and going back to irons. If anything it will be an arms race of sorts in terms of red dot technology.