That’s a reasonable guess if you don’t follow graphics developments, but the tech for producing realism hasn’t changed that much in the last 10 years, most of the realism developments have been incremental. The main thing that’s happened in CG in the last 10 years is speed and scale improvements. There were great fake-or-real CG photo contests in 2015 and earlier where some of the CG was photoreal enough to trick most people. The Windows wallpaper definitely could have been 100% there 10 years ago, for a skilled CG artist who knew what they wanted. The reasons for doing it practical don’t necessarily hinge on whether it was possible to do it in CG, there are good reasons to do it physically anyway.
The Stranger Things intro scene is CGI. Artists were consulted who originally created similar titles in the 80s with practical effects to see how they could do it too. The old-school artists said to just do it in CGI because that’s what they would have done.
People don’t hate CGI - they hate bad CGI. It’s hard to explain, but you know it when you see it.
Bad practical effects do exist, but even when bad they don’t look “unnatural”.
I recall Amazon’s Lord of the Rings title sequence [1] received some criticism for looking fake, even though they filmed it practically [2]. I’d guess it was due to folks assuming title sequences are CGI, combined with the fact that few people really know what poured liquid metal is supposed to look like.
There's a similar problem with gunshots and explosions - we want what movies have given us which is not what they actually act/sound like - so much so that live recordings of actual gunfire/explosions is often deemed "fake".
This is also the American/bald eagle problem. When people hear their actual cries, they’re often confused.