(La)TeX is an example of a very enlightened _idea_ that offed itself \footnotemark{} with a spectacularly cursed user interface. It is simply gross to write, and it's difficult for frontends, converters and GUIs to make it much better.

Yes yes, I can already hear the cultists chant "YoU dOn'T wRiTe In LaTeX" but this mentality is precisely the problem. If I can't write directly in your typesetting system nowadays, then I'm sorry, your system probably sucks.

You could unfortunately write an article or thesis quite comfortably in Word or even InDesign, while formatting as you go. (I say "unfortunately" because from a business-model and hacker's perspective, these tools suck.)

\footnotetext{not implying that LaTeX is dead, but referring to how it sentenced itself to the academic niche, in which case it might as well be dead…}

From what I’ve seen from Latex GUI applications, there’s no way we can avoid complexity. Most users will do OK with a basic word processor. We do not need a silver bullet for every use case. You select the best one and move on.