I'm pretty sympathetic to your view. I have friends I still keep up with from old jobs. I've worked at places where I pretty much hated everyone, but overall I've always managed to connect to someone there, and that was nice. Now it's stilted zoom meetings, Slack gifs, not much else. That's a bummer. I just came back from a 3 day work summit and it was actually great to see people I work with, to get to know them, to read their little mannerisms and find out their quirks. I'm a pretty shy person, and I surprised myself with how much I enjoyed it.

But work is a site of control. I think this is the source of controversy you've discovered. Even if you enjoy your work and the people you work with, it's still an obligation. It took 18+ years of conditioning to get you used to this life. Finally, workers (granted, members of the laptop class like us, already a pretty well-off group) get a bit of a say, a tad bit more control over their lives. You don't have to sit in traffic, or on a train, while your brain rots with stress. You don't have some petty asshole looking over your shoulder. You can see your family more. You can sleep more. It's quite liberating to have that choice.

From where I'm sitting, I see a big push to return to the office in the media. I get the feeling, totally unsubstantiated by evidence, that this is coming from the top. Insecure leaders who need to see their underlings typing. People who genuinely hate that they've lost some control, demanding that the serfs come in under their eye. This is neither nuanced nor totally fair, but I'm trying to evoke some feelings here, to maybe get at why this is controversial.

For me personally, if I could wave a wand, I'd choose a very short commute and 2-3 days in the office. But I also bristle at the back to the office push.