Unironically this is exactly the case, at least speaking for myself.
The fanbase at large has very extreme takes around yonko vs admiral. Shanks soloing all 3 admirals for example isn’t even generally regarded as a wild take, but here on worstgen, the most extreme admiral wankers will say Akainu has a good chance at beating Kaido…and that’s considered a controversial take even on a forum that’s unusually slanted towards admirals and Mihawk.
A lot of the old timers are indeed salty from years of seeing how lopsided the discourse is.
We’re not in the powerscaling section but I’ll say this much, the admirals and yonko are very clearly setup, narratively, to be on the same general level, if you look at the dialogue and the lore.
You have multiple panels of them being mentioned in the same breath by Luffy and others, you have Garp and sengoku’s strength being deeply respected by Roger and whitebeard (and Garp going on to teach Kuzan how to fight personally), and much more.
Story says they’re roughly equal, majority of the fanbase says they’re not even close. Saltiness ensues.
And as for Shanks, the thing is, everyone gets it. Yeah, we know he’s oda’s self insert. We know Oda hypes him up every time he appears on panel. He’s very strong, he’s very close to the mc, he probably has massive plot importance. Everyone gets it. It’s not some subtle thing that only a select enlightened group of fans see. In actuality, shanks being really strong is about as uncontroversial of a take as possible, has been ever since I picked up this manga nearly 20 years ago. The reason he’s topping this poll is, we all get it, we don’t need it constantly shoved down our throats. He gets downplayed as a response to how overwhelmingly the fanbase stans him.