I certainly used to, and used to think it was essentially gender neutral, but again - in certain contexts like a male dominated classroom, the women/nb students could easily feel excluded by it. Outside of that, I also recognized my trans friends had a lot of thoughtless people intentionally misgendering them on the regular just to be mean, and finding small ways to reduce that reinforcement felt better than not. It was also surprisingly not that tough for me to adopt the more neutral language, so if it's a subtle help with no skin off my back it just seems very win-win.

Despite how country/southern y'all comes across it really is the most inclusive and rolls off the tongue like nothing else

I guess the point is, how sure are you that all the members of the groups you address using your "gender neutral" term feel equally included?

I argue this as well. I think things turning gender-neutral is more progressive than them being cut, unless I'm missing something. I got kicked out of a progressive community (that I really wanted to stay in) partially because they disagreed with me on that opinion (along with the word "dude" as an interjection) and wanted everyone in lock-step. I will never forgive them.

I also think "guys" and "dude" have a level of informality and nuanced humor that doesn't have an easy substitute.