> a bunch of kids now do not even know that HTML is what gets rendered in the browser. They think that React is itself what browsers render.

Ironically, they are right and you are wrong.

HTML is a serialization format, which browsers use to construct a DOM in memory.

React renders directly to the DOM without ever serializing anything to HTML.

The fact that you got this wrong and are so highly upvoted really drives home the “old man shakes fist at clouds” nature of this thread.