Opening up TLDs beyond the originals and CCTLDs completely invalidated assumptions about what domains and domain names should mean. A massive disservice to everyone whose intuition was helping them avoid scams and squatting, but hey, at least a lot of money changed hands.
Yeah... I'm pretty burnt on them too... then again, I own about 20 I'm not actively using. Still not fun when you are just trying to come up with a domain name for an idea and everything is parked and/or they want thousands for the name.