Don't be silly, the legislation doesn't state that websites have to show cookie popups. It's rather where the term malicious compliance enters the picture, a compliance incentivized by the financial interests of the biggest advertising businesses the world has ever seen.
Let’s accept for the sake of argument that all the cookie banners are malicious compliance. Fine. Then they should change the law to stop the malicious compliance! Regulation has an outcome nobody likes. Are you gonna wait for every company to stop being “malicious”? Or are you gonna fix the law?
To be fair, I don't remember people complaining about cookies. The question is fairly simple, etc. Meanwhile ads? They try to steal the attention. So yeah, lots of friends complain about internet ads, not so many about cookies. I'm EU based.
My friends / co worker are computer and non computer people, hobbys, cultural background. Maybe your friend group is highly selected. Which country are you from?