Well, I didn't really pay much attention to the hugos before, but I can say with a certainty that I will be paying even less attention to them from now on.
Groups of people flinging poo at each other is enough to put anyone off something, but then treating the awards as the bone to be fought over for their 'side' is a veritable icewater shower for cooling off any interest that could have been sparked in me.
Now, I'm not doing the thing where someone comes into the thread to announce how uninterested they are in the topic.
More It's an attempt to illustrate that this kind of blow up only harms the award for all associated.
Even people like me, who are so dimly aware of the hugos the extent of our contact was little more than a sticker that sometimes turned up on a book cover, are hearing about this and withdrawing.
Granted, they never really did anything to influence my purchasing before this anyway.
Not to say that a big sticker on the front of a book saying "award winner" or "nominee" doesn't catch the eye when browsing a shelf, but I don't think it's ever been enough to convince me to pick up a title based on that alone.
As such, I don't think it will hurt scifi/fantasy writing as a genre, but it will only serve to harm the hugos even if they do manage to find some way to reconcile all affronted parties in this latest poop flinging extravaganza.
That said, the idea that someone could find a way to reconcile the groups feels like such a far fetched concept that even the hugo voters would reject it as being too demanding on their suspension of disbelief.