For me objects capture some notion of invariants in data that would otherwise just be a bunch of variables. This is usually indicated by functions that act on the data maintaining the invariants. Those functions are the methods.

I get that many people either don't see, or don't place much importance on the invariants of their data and so they are happy writing functions and even get annoyed by people and their over use of objects. Maybe these people are just way smarter than me; I definitely need objects/classes to help me organize my code.