They show up in every architecture thread on the internet. Someone posts a nuanced question about database design, event sourcing, or multi-tenant data isolation, and within three minutes comes the comment: "Just use Firebase."
My app has complex relational data with joins across 30 tables. "Just use Firebase." I need ACID transactions for financial operations. "Just use Firebase." I'm building an offline-first POS system that syncs with a cloud backend and handles money. "JUST USE FIREBASE."
It has become a reflex, a liturgical response, the tech equivalent of "thoughts and prayers." These people skip the problem and the requirements. A question about data fires a single synapse that says Firebase.
Firebase is great for prototypes and hackathons, including that side project you will abandon in two weeks. I would pass on it for anything where the data model makes you think "hmm, this might need a JOIN."
Try telling them that and you get the pitying, condescending look of someone who has achieved enlightenment through NoSQL and cannot understand why you cling to your relational heresies. "You just don't understand the Firebase way." Yeah. The Firebase way. Where you denormalize everything into a JSON tree so deep it has its own postal code, and every query is a prayer to the indexing gods.
At this point I think it qualifies as a cult.