I still don't understand why insane people use ccTLDs for the characters, rather than due to the national law. It's like picking a flag of convenience for your ship due to the pretty colors of the flag.
Also, ships don't use flags of convenience for their colors but for laws that are advantageous to them.
The parent posting didn't question that. On the contrary, the fact that ships chose their flag by law instead of color - that was exactly the parent posting's point.
I'd still rather have a domain like "tryfoobar.com" early on rather than foobar.ix or even worse, foob.ar or foubar.com. Provided foobar.com isn't a competitor, porn site, etc., and that I can make efforts to buy foobar.com/net/org/co.uk/jp/etc. with time if successful.
The only strong argument for (ab)using a ccTLD, IMO is URL shorteners.
I might not be in a demographic that matters, but I do wonder about the numbers.