I think what started me down the anti-React path was realizing that there were other frameworks out there that don’t even use a virtual dom. Plus you get tired of being told that the most obvious and intuitive way to do various things in React actually goes against some best practice that they’ve established.
I was using my school’s website the other day and had a similar thought. I remember waiting a similar amount of time for many pages to load back in the dialup days. Why is it so slow to load a page that just shows some text and buttons??