Speaking as a fucker, I think the use of em-dashes has been pretentious since the 1890s. The rise of typewriters destroyed em-dashes already. The LLMs subsequently created an accidental parody of sophisticated writing.
It's like saying I am intimately involved in the printer's art. This is usually not true, unless you're involved with a very niche publisher who still has a box of sorts and inky fingers. Hyphen-minus all the way.
No it doesn't. I happened to have read "design and typography in easy steps" as a (bored) child of the 90s, but that's the extent of my "printer's art" knowledge.
I don't understand the celebration of ignorance myself. There are lots of things I don't know how to do or how to use, but I'd never dream of complaining because somebody else does.
People seem to LOVE parens, although I was taught that they are almost 100% never the correct thing to use in prose. But apparently "some fucker" will accuse me of being pretentious ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Otherwise, I see people just use a regular dash a lot. I love the em dash myself, but of course stopped using it so I won't get accused of AI (which is sad). It's easy to type, at least on a Mac.
Parens and em-dashes do different things. A simple parenthetical is an secondary aside (it's a half step towards a footnote). An interrupting phrase is intended to (abruptly) command attention.
I mean, make the case em-dashes are overused and used lazily, I'm right there with you. I just don't see the pretense.