I love them, so long as random townies don't appear in them. They're supposed be unique and special for certain types of sim. For example, here are some that I made with non-standard skin tones.
https://i.imgur.com/9YKYTQq.jpghttps://i.imgur.com/DPHcIDm.jpg
This is Magne. She was meant to be a creepy android ragdoll and i made a few versions of her before deciding how I wanted her to look. Would someone with her weird stitched up skin look right walking around town? No, of course not, but I look how she looks.
And lets talk Aliens! I have so many in TS2, and I used to use the green skin tone and CC eyes to create aliens in The Sims 3 when it came out before they were introduced because I've always been fascinated with Pollination Technician 9 and the Curious family ever since I started playing The Sims 2 when I was about 10 or 11! I don't have any screenshots of aliens I made a decade ago in TS3 however as I've changed PC's twice since then, however. But instead, here's Galileo Curious, the son of Vidcund Curious in my last Strangetown playthrough.
https://i.imgur.com/0dOezUs.png
With all that said, there are some skin tone colors I don't tend to use. I like the greens and blues, and I'd use purples and pinks to make Night Elf style elves, but I don't see myself ever making use of colors like yellow or red, though I know people who make berry sims do, and I sure used to see a lot of berry sim legacies back in The Sims 3. Not so much anymore, though.
I almost guarantee that person you argued with didn't play much The Sims 3, if at all though, because Berry Sim's seemed ABSURDLY popular, but maybe that's because a decade ago I was on Tumblr.