I think part of it is the context that JSON and XML are used in, particularly the era of software that uses these formats for configuration and the design implications that has.

Recently I've had to work with XML config files for a tool called Oozie, which is a data pipeline scheduling tool within the hadoop/spark ecosystem, and it has been soul crushingly tedious for me. Everything feels verbose and opaque, the documentation seems to prioritize enumerating every possible configuration option over providing minimum viable configs for common use cases.

JSON configs often just feel more simple and developer friendly. I'd say this has less to do with technical differences between JSON and XML and more to do with how "modern" software systems have been designed to be more ergonomic for developers/administrators and these modern systems happen to be more likely to use JSON.

It's also fun to hear non-technical people at work talk about "Jason files".