I fundamentally disagree here. There are ways that people waste their time on the web that are far more pernicious than "learning how to write gemtext markup"
The web is in a seriously messed up state, and in many ways, things are getting worse. I think it's far more dangerous to shrug our shoulders and just let things continue as they are than to work on projects that attempt to present an alternative.
Edit: A point I'd like to make here is that Gemini is not an alternative web and never will be, according to the designer's own statements. I share your frustration with some of the modern aspects of the web but the web also does a lot of things right that we may take for granted, let's not be so cynical as to forget that. I'm guilty of it myself in the past but no longer, and part of it was because people misled me.
Arguably there are worse things in society than techies making tech for themselves.
Ironically though ... , to me it seems that Gemini and Facebook, though culturally presented as opposites here, are really fruits of the same tree, just different gardens and different stages of growth.