I have to admit, I wasn’t aware of it being any kind of culture until it was brought to my attention. IIRC, it was brought to my attention here. There was (is?) a poster that was of Romani descent and would regularly explain the problems with the word when it came up. In fact, as I recall, the first time I walked into a thread where this was going on, it was over another poster’s use of the word ‘gyp’. I don’t think, at the time, I was even aware that gyp (as a pejorative used about someone ripping you off) was short for gypsy and as I said before, I wasn’t aware that gypsy was a culture.
That was quite a while back, but after a few posts like that, I don’t think I’ve used the word since, at least not in that sense. This was also right around the time that gyp or gypsy was falling out of favor as more people were learning this. So I certainly wasn’t alone and this poster wasn’t just getting offending over nothing.
I’ll have to look back and see who that was.
Quick ETA, the first thread I found, while looking for that poster, was from 2012 when it was being discussed. Someone in that thread mentioned they’d started hearing about it at least 10 years earlier.