> IMO, the only people that use LaTeX are people who are willing to trade the convenience and productivity of using a sane document authoring format for the warm and fuzzy feeling [...]

I hope you are aware that literally all research in mathematics and computer science is typed up and published in LaTeX?

The major selling point to me, is that I can write the content I want, in a rather straightforward manner, and then just apply whatever formatting is necessary. It makes a lot of sense in the context of, say, university, where you're taking multiple classes, which each use different formatting guidelines, but those formatting guidelines stay the same for the duration of the course. I could just figure out (either using existing formats, or by hand-rolling my own) a document type for each class, and then never think about formatting again, whereas with a word processor, you've got to keep in mind the arcane series of steps necessary format your document in whatever style you require, and then pray that any modifications you make don't break the formatting.

The other place it's useful is heavily typeset documents, especially those subject to somewhat frequent modification, like a resume.

Do you feel the same about Markdown?

Just curious.

Alternatively, they're people who write documents in a field where LaTeX is the standard, they're not computer savvy enough to try to even look for something new that might be acceptable or might compile to LaTeX, and at any rate they want to focus more on their research than they do on changing the typesetting norms in their field.

(No shade on people who do decide to use alternatives, and Typst is great!)