Not OP, but why would you feel bad? Anecdotally, I’ve gone into interviews before thinking it means nothing, and one of the small companies I wasn’t serious about ended up convincing me to join. It’s really on the company to sell their vision.

Yes. I usually target hybrid roles in a place I am unwilling to live like New York as many are explicitly for practice. And I generally do not interview for smaller companies as the process is usually wacky. I was once asked to argue for forcing a company on Linux, Mac, or Windows for a dev role.