Typical consumer
Yeah, the typical enduser is usually entirely not like us or those that developed the machine. They care less, for most, it's just a chore.
In terms of wear: It really depends on how often you wear stuff and for what occasion, how you wash it and what it actually is.
For example, I have 4 T-Shirts in different blue tones. Those are about 3 years old, washed once a weak, so 150 washes round about. Because they are only one color, the fadeing is not as apparent, and because I only wear them while doing light stuff like studying or cleaning, there is barely any small holes.
Then I have about 10 T-Shirts that I wear to university, dance clases, basicly whenever I interact with others. They are white with several different kinds of prints of all colors of the rainbow. Because I wear those while being more active and because I use an oxygen bleach agent to keep the dominating white fabric really white, the prints fade quite quickly and depending on the specific makeing sometimes holes start to pop up. Thus, simmilar to my underwear, socks, shoes and jeans, they only last 50-70 washes (or weeks that is) at max, or round about a year, give or take.
So yeah, there are more gentle systems, and HE vs non-HE in the day to day use will probably not make such a huge difference. With ones washing habbits, one might be gentler then the other, for the others the opposite.
But I *think* the FLs are surperior in most any way, being more gentle, more efficent, better cleaning. Only slower.
So I *think* that the days of any OK TL system, be it HE or not, are counted, soon. Not that they are a bad system, just not as good.