No, not pablum.
ETOH fuel dried out all the gaskets on my motorcycle and one of our small 2-cycle outboard motors.
The stuff is total shit for small engines.
Horse shit. I have run it in no less than a dozen small engines (many of them 20+ years old). The sum total of the problems resulting was having to clean out the carb on a 20-year-old leaf blower when the alcohol loosened years of crud in the fuel system. Cleaned it out, I'm still using that leaf blower. I have run my old (late 70's!) generator for easily 1000 hours on E10...it ran 19
days straight at one point without a hiccup. My wife's old motorcycle (1979 Suzuki) had no problems with E10. None of the half dozen vehicles I help prep for winter storage have had a problem.
In your case, I suspect operator error.