People overuse it a lot, hence the backlash. I think it seems "fancy" or businesslike to some people (it's the opposite) and others just don't think about their

People overuse it a lot, hence the backlash. I think it seems "fancy" or businesslike to some people (it's the opposite) and others just don't think about their writing enough to notice the weak tone, needless misdirection, and wasted words that result from using passive in too many cases where active would do. Most of the time, in most people's writing, switching most of the passive-voiced sentences to active will improve the writing. As with all writing rules, you don't need to follow it if you know what you're doing—by definition, since knowing-what-you're-doing means (among other things) not accidentally using the passive voice where active would have better served your purposes, but using it only when you want its particular effects.