Is there any hard data on what you refer to as "the cookie banner madness"? Personally, I click 'refuse' on every banner that pops up. They're not all that annoying, so I'm not sure that "everybody" opts-in to "everything all the time"
I had a person who was having a printer problem close a dialog box telling exactly what was wrong with the printer. It came up every single time they tried to print. This is not abnormal behavior.
People regularly just click on the default boxes, and you know it's true otherwise there wouldn't be so many dark patterns on the internet. Dark patterns work because people don't read what's on their screen.