[yodsanklai]

> Monads seem to have this strange aura around them that attracts certain kinds of personalities

I don't know if it's a matter of personality or aura. Monads are the first unfamiliar/complicated abstraction you're bumping into when learning Haskell. You can't do anything IO without monads, and they're not straightforward like functors or monoids. This is probably why there are more discussions about monads.