There was a window of time in the mid 2010's, around the peak of Unreal 4's ubiquity, where you could crank games to Ultra settings and not even have to think about it. No time spent experimenting, tweaking individual sliders or toggles, nothing.

PC hardware was relatively cheap, the consoles were powerful, and games still looked amazing, for a good 5-8 years. A generation of players came of age during this time without ever having to learn the vital skills of 1) tempering expectations and 2) tweaking settings. So they now see ANY friction, ANY dropped frames, ANY need to mess with settings, as a personal sleight. The PS5's "Performance vs Quality" toggles are the ONLY thing they'll tolerate now.