Except in the early days of smartphone, people pushed back against pull-to-refresh[0][1][2]. Android devs were confused why it was a thing. It's a design with zero discoverability - how do you know what would happen when you pull down? Perhaps the app would show a search bar. Or pinned posts if it's a forum board. Or ask you to review the app? How do you know pulling down is a gesture at all?

The only reason pull-to-refresh got accepted is that it came so early that the UX of smartphone app wasn't well established. Before pull-to-search or pull-to-whatever had a chance.

> nihilistically

It's quite nihilistic to think history doesn't exist and things were born as they are currently.

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20201204045158/https://www.fastc...

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20120331181045/http://android.cy...

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/androiddev/comments/vbt6d/pull_to_r...