Go seems to have some enduring affection and popularity for new projects and companies. I recently felt like a lot of the recent shift was less about GC and more about runtime characteristics (static binaries, lean resource consumption, lack of an in-your-face virtual machine).

It never felt like Nim, Pony, or Crystal were ever that popular that a diminished hype cycle registered as something thematic to me (not that I really intend to disagree with your perspective here).