To many people, it's just basic logic: "everyone must want the latest React features, and the only way to get those is with Next, so everyone must want Next".
That is extremely fishy, isn't it?
Next.js is essentially the reference and test bed impl.
Where people go wrong is thinking they need to default to the inherently complex niche feature of client hydration which is a niche optimization enabled by a quirk of web tech.
My point is that it's fishy how they push features that just so happen to be the value proposition of the only corporation that just so happens to be able to implement them.