The neighbouring town publishes data on water quality, and you pity the poor souls because the data shoes their water quality is horrible. Thing is, you are using the same water source. If anything, your water is likely worse because there is no transparency and some of the pipes might be leaded and you wouldn't even know it.
Same with cookies. The internet is polluted with aggressive tracking everywhere. In the EU you see how horrible it is - in the rest of the world people aren't even half as aware.
That said, people either start using browser plugins or just click yes and sacrifice their soul to the gods of dark patterns. In either case you don't see those banners as frequently unless you use private browsing.
You seem to think that the cookie popups are doing something useful, but that's up for debate. Cookie popups could be making it worse by normalizing tracking and programming everyone for an "Accept all or get nothing" compliance culture.
Btw, some of my message was lost in your attempted analogy: If we both are drinking toxic water, then I feel bad that you have to additionally click through a legislator's theater of concern and sign through various permission-granted-to-poison-me slips while you drink from the same tap.
Part of it is lack of enforcement. The GDPR requires that rejecting tracking be as easy as accepting it. If there is an "Accept all" button, then there must also be a "Reject all" button. Furthermore, there can be no penalties for rejecting the tracking. So clicking the "Reject all" button may not bar the user from the site.
The neighbouring town publishes data on water quality, and you pity the poor souls because the data shoes their water quality is horrible. Thing is, you are using the same water source. If anything, your water is likely worse because there is no transparency and some of the pipes might be leaded and you wouldn't even know it.
Same with cookies. The internet is polluted with aggressive tracking everywhere. In the EU you see how horrible it is - in the rest of the world people aren't even half as aware.
That said, people either start using browser plugins or just click yes and sacrifice their soul to the gods of dark patterns. In either case you don't see those banners as frequently unless you use private browsing.