Do you think it may be your bias based on your entire lifetime of looking at Mercator projections? The purpose of this project is to make it an accurate representation. The observations you make are precisely why this made was made.
So: this map has very good properties in some sense, very bad in others.
This map may solve some imaginary problem of public perception, but at the cost of losing valuable information easily gleaned from other maps,like northern and southern hemisphere, which places share the same latitude, which places share the same longitude. These are physical distinctions which matter.