first stuck in vim 13 years ago. No internet, no GUI, could not speak english, 1 book on unix/linux. So I had to reboot (hard reboot) computer, three times, then re-install OS, since something broke because of hard-forced reboot.
Don't believe I ever got stuck in vi. All the cool kids were emacs users and it was years before I bothered to learn it.
It was not a good hi experience.
I think vim and emacs come with basic instructions on the splash screen now to help newbies.