I do a fair bit of design in my free time, and am friends with people majoring in it. People are excited about variable fonts in academia and in design circles.

I do a fair bit of design in my free time, and am friends with people majoring in it. People are excited about variable fonts in academia and in design circles. I use them nearly exclusively now between Inter, Merriweather, Bodoni* by Indestructible Type, Hepta Slab, and the IBM Plexes. And this is all just for people using it in desktop design programs, since it's being embedded there at the source (designers make it before it gets to the frontend folks), it's looking promising. I'm 99% sure it'll catch on this time around, in short :)