I love the idea of the game. I love the mechanics of it, such as permanent loss of your ship. It means there's always a demand for crafting. I also really like the hands-off approach the devs/admins/etc take to what happens in game.
It can be. The beauty of Eve is you get to decide how to play the game, how much stress you want to take. You don't have to do it the way other one is. It's completely fine to mine in a Venture. The game is a fractal at every level of game play, the risks and rewards simply go up as you advance in the game and develop more ambitious personal goals.
You can decide what level to play at and grow as you like, as you get better.
It's with this approach that I'll probably always return to Eve, play it for a bit, stop and repeat.
If you stick to 1.0-sec space, it's not stressful at all. But instead, it's boring because there's next to zero risk, and also no reward. You can mine low-value ores while AFK, or go ratting and have boringly easy encounters.
It's never zero, though. Which is a far better situation compared to many MMO games where they really have zero risk areas (or the whole game is zero risk).
Depends on what you are doing. The first time you manage to escape with your ship intact after an incursion in low security or (specially) Null sec space, you get hooked. Or when you do the same, but in wormhole space.
If you are doing missions or participating in alliance shenanigans... yeah. Lots of mindless button pushing. At that point, trading in the market is more fun.
the modern counter to this would be juicy targets (freighters, starter ships full of plex etc) afk/unaware in 1.0 getting popped by jihad destroyer fleets. but it was a good meme people who didnt explore what the game offered liked to perpetuate
But...the gameplay is just boring as hell. This video sums it up: https://youtu.be/4c6jafaiPh8?t=65