Use what you like. It's Linux. It's what you make it. This is why there's options. Why would your ideal config look anything like the next person's? Everybody

Use what you like. It's Linux. It's what you make it. This is why there's options. Why would your ideal config look anything like the next person's? Everybody has different needs, and everybody has different taste, different hardware, different workflows. What I'd recommend to one person isn't what I'd recommend to the next. I wouldn't even necessarily use the same DE between a laptop and desktop. I see the value in both GNOME and KDE. I use KDE, but I miss certain things from GNOME like GNOME Sushi, which gives you a preview of a file with the spacebar similar to macOS' Finder's Quick Look. If you're a Mac user, GNOME will seem relatively familiar in the default OOBE. You know how you hear a lot of very positive Mac users but very few people ever really talk about Windows machines in a positive light? Macs attract a certain user with a certain mindset, and GNOME is just like that too. You hear about their enjoyment of it. KDE users tend to be a bit more utilitarian in my experiences and just pick the thing that works and gets the task done, seldom ever discussing it, because it's just a DE. That doesn't mean that either GNOME or KDE are the best or only way to do things though. In terms of gaslighting, you're probably just chasing your tail. You want to understand what others see in it, that's cool of you, but maybe it just makes more sense to enjoy KDE, which it sounds like you already are. You can observe a similar thing in choice of DAW for audio, some people prefer x, others prefers y, z users are very vocal about enjoying their DAW (hello Reaper fanboys), but what ultimately counts is your ability to do the things you want to do with the tool at hand.