I agree the whole tele thing is overblown. You should ski on what you're comfortable with. My father started doing backcountry skiing in the 50s, and like most folks from the PNW he used the classic old AT setup with real seal skins. He never shopped for specific bc skis, cause they didn't make them. He had an old pair of Heads that had cable bindings that locked down for downhill mode.
It wasn't till the 70s that tele skis came into vogue. There were a few books out claiming that it was a pure form of skiing. Well around here skis that locked down to downhill mode were the, "classic," mode of skiing. In college I got sucked into the idea that I was going to have to learn to Tele. I tried it out for a bit, and it was alright, but suddenly it came to me that all I really needed to do was bring my AT setup to school from home and use them instead of relearning skiing. I ended up skiing mostly with people on tele gear. They would make comments from time to time, but the bottom line was we all had a good time skiing.
It wasn't till after I left school that you started to see people going back to AT skis. There are still plenty of tele folks with a superior attitude about their form of making turns. I figure you should ski on whatever makes you feel the most comfortable and ditch your attitude towards others unless it's clearly a joke.
As Extremo would say Rip it up dude LOL.