I'm certainly not anti 'R' and I personally like the subtle styling although maybe too subtle from the front.
The way car buying has changed over the last few years means we are seeing people driving cars like the R who wouldn't normally be able to afford one and this has made them relatively common.
My one pet hate with the R is Lapiz Blue but that's just personal preference.
Looks the dogs in black though 
The whole cheap lease deal era put more R's on the road for sure, and reduced the exclusivity somewhat, and at first that bothered me but I got over it, once I got in the car! And, relatively speaking I don't think they are really as common as some would like to think, lol.
There's 4 R's round my way and roughly the same amount of GTI's but a fair few more GTD's. If 4 R's (in a locality of 150,000 residents) is deemed to be 'common' then I can live with that, haha. Good job I don't have a Nissan Joke otherwise I'd be crying my heart out.....now that's a common car.......they're breeding like rabid bunnies round my way.
I am massive fan of the GTI (having had 3 myself) and I half expected to not love the R as much, but boy was I wrong! I just love it! Understated it is but actually rather menacing looking from the front which doesn't always come across in photos, and as much as the quad tailpipes might seem 'silly' to some, once you've got them, they add something extra to the car, and suddenly 2 tailpipes seems lacking.
I'm not a massive fan of Lapiz myself but never been a blue car person. Now black, that's another matter!
As for the whole 'owning' thing, I do own my R outright, and I like 'owning' a car, but I couldn't care less how someone chooses to pay for their car. True, there's people that wouldn't be in an R if it wasn't for the former lease deals, but so what! They will move on quickly enough to something else. There's plenty of people in R's who appreciate it for what it is (a fast Golf) and would like to do their bit for helping to build some R heritage.