I think it just doesn't really click for people most of the time. Eg for my mom no amount of showing science pics and explaining the scale of the distances conveyed things, it only really clicked when Jupiter became visible in the night sky as a particularly bright and large point of light which caught her interest, and when we moved to somewhere dark enough that the galactic plane was faintly noticeable.
Yeah, I haven't seen the milky way with naked eye for a few years.