SPAs and REST APIs moved a lot of the complexity around data to the client side. GraphQL moved it back to the server side. I think that's a reasonable decision, as the client - compared to the server - runs in a much more unpredictable environment. Of course some backend devs complain about more work, especially work that could be moved to the client side at first. Making things the proper way is hard, yes.

The pitch I remember back when it first was released was that GraphQL was meant for development, when the API was still changing a lot, and was supposed to be replaced with dedicated API calls before going to production. During development frontend devs has something flexible they could use without pestering the backend constantly, then the dedicated non-GraphQL production version would be stable and could be significantly more optimized than the GraphQL version.

The backend still needs to implement the endpoints for the frontend? Not sure what you mean, if anything the backend work increases because everything is done on the backend now.

And did you really link me to a meme you made specifically for this conversation?